Slavery in the Union

"We must ensure that all life is treated with the dignity it deserves," President Bush declared during his final State of the Union address. He then segued into a call to ban human cloning. He didn't talk about dignity in terms of ravaged pensions, working longer hours for lower wages, and the loss of healthcare and other benefits. He didn't talk about dignity in terms of the rise in poverty – 37 million Americans, one in eight citizens now living below the poverty line in the wealthiest nation in the world. And he certainly didn't talk about dignity when it comes to migrant workers in Immokalee, Florida where – as Senator Bernie Sanders told me just days before Bush's SOTU – "the norm is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery."

These farmworkers pick the tomatoes many Americans eat at McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King and other fast food chains. They are paid 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. It's grueling work, as Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser noted recently in a New York Times op-ed : "During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes." For that two tons the worker can expect about $50, and annual wages of $10,000-$14,000. Wages have been stagnant for more than two decades. Two weeks ago, six people were indicted on slavery charges for beating workers, chaining and locking them inside U-haul trucks, and threatening physical harm if the workers left their jobs. This is far from a rare occurrence, as the Miami Herald wrote, "… farm crew slavery stories and the brutal exploitation of undocumented workers have long since lost their shock value in Florida."

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) – a community-based worker organization – has "exposed a half-dozen slavery cases" that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1,000 workers, and also advocated for better wages, living conditions, respect from the industry, and an end to indentured servitude. CIW recently scored critical victories in negotiating a penny-per-pound surcharge – so workers would now receive about 77 cents per 32-pound bucket – with McDonald's and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC). The corporations – not the tomato growers – would pay the 40 percent salary increase. Astonishingly, Burger King has refused to go along with the deal (tell Burger King to pony up) – it would cost them less than $300,000 annually and the corporation took in $2.23 billion in revenues in 2007. Not to mention three private equity firms control most of Burger King's stock, including Goldman Sachs. In 2006 Goldman Sachs' top 12 execs took home bonuses exceeding $200 million – "more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year," according to Schlosser.) Even more outrageous is the response of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state's growers. The group has said it will fine any member $100,000 for accepting the extra penny per pound for worker wages.

It's no surprise that Bush has failed to use the bully pulpit to call out slavery and excessive greed in our nation. It's also no surprise that Sen. Sanders is once again taking a leading role in serving as the conscience of the Senate. Two weeks before the State of the Union address, Sanders, along with Schlosser, went to Immokalee to meet with CIW and witness the working and living conditions firsthand. In letters co-signed by Senators Edward Kennedy, Richard Durbin, and Sherrod Brown, he urged both Burger King and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange to support the penny-per-pound deal. He's also working with Kennedy to hold hearings on this issue in the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee chaired by Kennedy. I spoke with the Senator about his experiences down in Immokalee, and why this is such an important issue for our country. If President Bush truly wants to use his final year in office to ensure that all life is treated with dignity, he should head on over to Sen. Sanders office and get involved.

Here, then, is what Senator Sanders shared with me:

"It was really stunning – the likes of which I have never seen in my life. I've long been interested in workers issues. But when we talk about the race to the bottom here in the United States I would say that Immokalee, Florida is the bottom. I think those are workers who are more ruthlessly exploited and treated with more contempt than any group of workers that I've ever seen and I suspect exist in the US.

What I observed is… I was out at 5:30 in the morning, where tomato pickers from all over the community assemble at several locations, primarily in a large parking lot. School buses come by to pick them up and take them to different growers' tomato fields. Some are selected and some are not. So, for a start, when you line up at 5:30 in the morning, you don't know if you're going to make a nickel during that day. You're standing there, and someone is pointing, ‘you, you, you… but not you….' and you can see people dejected, because by 8:30 the buses are out and if you're not selected you're not gonna work. So these are desperate people then who have just discovered that that day they're not gonna earn a penny.

Then you get on the bus and depending on which farm you're going to it will be longer or shorter, but perhaps you're going a half hour away…. You're getting to the field at 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning, and you don't go to work right away. You're getting paid piecemeal. The pay is very, very low to begin with, but you're getting paid piecemeal. You can't pick until the sun comes out and dries the tomatoes. So we got photographs of workers just hanging around the bus waiting for the tomatoes to dry and that might be an hour, hour and a half. Now it's not only that this is your time, it is in a sense the contempt that you are so disposable, that we can get you out here just to sit around doing nothing while you're waiting for the tomatoes to dry….

Then you go out and you're picking tomatoes and you make on average about 45 cents for a 32 pound bucket of tomatoes – about a penny and a half per pound. That is not a lot of money. My understanding is that at the end of the year these are workers that will make 10,000, 12,000, 14,000 a year, working a very, very difficult job, under a very hot sun. After you do this job for a number of years your knees go out because you're bending over all of the time. Obviously there are no benefits that go with the job. I went over to the health center to see what was going on…. I met with these workers, and talked to them – they just don't go to the doctor. Some of them are able to take their children to the doctor, they have no real access to healthcare.

In terms of their living conditions, I visited trailers… and these trailers were old, decrepit trailers where you had 8 to 10 people living in the trailer. In the morning to get to the bathroom, sink, or stove, you gotta wait in line to do it, because there are a lot of people in front of you. And they're paying in some cases $50 per person, per week! You got that? So, the landlord who owns this old trailer is getting $2000 a month. And what someone there told me – I don't know if it's true or not – they buy these old trailers for about $2000 so they get their money back at the end of one month.

The days I was there – it was raining, when it rains you don't pick. The next day it rained mid-day so you had half a day of picking. Then, an amazing coincidence – when I was there the US Attorney announced an indictment on slavery charges. So we have seen now – I don't remember exactly the number – of different indictments that have been made against different individuals for slavery… which means that some of these people are being held in captivity, in some cases in chains. I think in the last instances, a couple of workers literally forcibly busted out of truck in which they were held against their will. So, the norm there is a disaster, and the extreme is slavery. And this is taking place in the United States of America in the year 2008.

Now some people might say, ‘Well, I don't pick tomatoes why do I have to worry about it?' And the answer is that so long as these types of abysmal working conditions exist in the US, they create a culture which leads us to the race to the bottom… which says that any worker can be subject to arbitrary actions on the part of an employer. Just create a very, very strong anti-worker culture, which is part of the destruction of the middle class, the increase in poverty, the lack of respect for working people in this country.

Now the good news is there is a very wonderful group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who have managed to put pressure on large buyers of tomatoes, i.e., fast food chains like Yum! which owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and McDonald's, to pay an additional penny a pound. And if you understand that if someone is making a penny and a half a pound, and they get an additional penny, that's a very significant increase. Burger King has been resistant, and there is now pressure being put on Burger King and other companies. And I would hope that as Americans, we all do everything we can, to demand that companies pay these workers a living wage and end this horrendous exploitation.

The Tomato Growers Exchange seems to be playing a very reactionary role. They are claiming that this additional penny a pound is in violation of antitrust law… I myself think that the issue – if you look at the amount of money that is being asked to be contributed by McDonald's, Burger King, and so forth – it is nothing. Very, very small number. I don't think the money is the issue. I think truthfully, in my gut, the issue is a question of a balance of power. It is a feeling right now that you have workers who are absolutely helpless, the feeling that if they achieve some victories, they may have more confidence in themselves and more of an ability to stand up for their rights.

So, imagine, just put yourself in their place. You don't know whether you're gonna work or not, there are no guarantees that you are – I may pick you, I may not – if you come there, if I pick you, you're gonna wait around for an hour and a half. What does that do to you as a human being? But these are desperate people who need the work, so to my mind it was an eye-opening experience, and I hope that as a nation we can end that kind of exploitation.

The very good news – what was positive about my visit down there was – we did a press conference, and the reporters went to Burger King, and Burger King came forth with what appeared to be a conciliatory response. Now whether it is just talk or not, we can't tell. But we want to pursue that. And certainly what we released when I was down there was a letter that was written by Senator Kennedy, Sen. Durbin, Sen. Brown and myself. And Sen. Kennedy has been very clear in telling me that he is prepared to do hearings on this issue. And I think that's terribly important, not only in exposing the exploitation, but trying to explain to the American people how slavery can take place in the United States in the year 2008."

Comments (56)

1. Seems a bit of conflation....slavery charges (no specific number of cases cited) and low wages for migrant farm workers.

   Could it be using the EXTREME to sell the general problem?

   So we hear about "37 million are living below the poverty line"...and to hammer it home throw in some talk about people being beaten and locked in trucks, so the mind merges the two into "There are 37 million slaves in the United States!!!!"

   The Right does it too. Find some strident teacher in Berkeley who kicks a kid out of class for bringing their Bible to show-n-tell...then talks about school violence, gun seizures, teen pregnancy....and it becomes "If they would put prayer back in school, it'd fix all that."

   Posted by Mask at 01/29/2008 @ 10:23pm

2. The current issue of Nat'l Geographic has a story, "Mexico's Other Border", on migrants from Central America and beyond, who cross illegally into Mexico....most are headed for the US. In this part of Mexico, like throughout Mexico, not enough Mexican males remain to tend to the farms and such, and some Central/South Americans end up as seasonal migrants for Mexican farmers.

   On Page 73, there is a full page photo of a freight train topped with dozens of these Central/South American men (no women) riading the rail north.

   Folks, it is this inexhaustable torrent of humanity entering the US ILLEGALLY, that keeps the wages low AND ALLOWS evil and greedy men to treat some farm workers like dirt....there is more where they come from!

   Posted by Happy at 01/29/2008 @ 10:37pm

3. Uh, ZERO, Yum! doesn't own Burger King. I think you need to direct your attention to Goldman Sachs and the other financal firms that own most of BK's stock.

   I seriously doubt the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee will do anything.

   Posted by ACook at 01/29/2008 @ 11:16pm

4. Happy, I find it deeply disturbing for you to blame these workers for their conditions. The people who make up this "torrent of humanity" (did you even pause to think about the meaning of the word humanity when you used it?) do not decide to set their wages so abhorrently low; they do not decide that they will be beaten if they do not work, or that they will perform back-breaking work for hours on end. It is their employers who do it. How dare you blame the people whose labor puts food on your plate for the abuse that they experience daily?

   Most people who migrate from Mexico and Central America to the U.S. don't do it because they want to. They don't even do it because they have any illusions that they will be treated fairly in this country. They do it because they don't have any other choice to ensure survival for themselves and their families. The U.S. is in many ways responsible for the displacement of millions of people from that part of the globe, from the bloody CIA-supported regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador to the free-trade agreements that have decimated Mexican agriculture and robbed countless farmers of their livelihood. It is only fair that the U.S. take responsibility for the consequences of its economic, military, and political impact around the globe--and in no region has this impact been more profound than in Latin America--by treating the people displaced in its wake with dignity.

   Posted by joyfulspark at 01/30/2008 @ 12:13am

5. Posted by FRANKSHITZ 01/29/2008 @ 9:38pm

   brother, your karma just took a big turn for the worse.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 12:13am

6. The job pays what it pays...if no one took the wage it would raise higher in order to reach a level where people would come to work ...if conditions are that bad here for them perhaps it might be better if we help them return home and to a better life..

   Posted by JOMAMMA 01/29/2008 @ 10:00pm

   hmmm, is the surname maasch cherokee or navajo?

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 12:18am

7. fuck NAFTA.

   Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 12:20am

8. Posted by JOYFULSPARK 01/30/2008 @ 12:13am

   Oh, JOY, you want to open our borders to all the billions of folks who would love to come and make the Living Wage you deem `fair'! Why should just Mexico and their southern neighbors have the advantage of being able to travel over land......let's just have free flights everyday from every poor 3rd world country....that's it...how humane!

   The Libs will never convince me that all, or most, employers of illegals are evil. Hell, I've employed several myself and treated them fair but paid what the going rates were.

   Libs like you almost always, have never owned a business where one must compete when the door opens every morning and the phone is off forwarding or the answer machine!

   Posted by Happy at 01/30/2008 @ 12:26am

9. Posted by HAPPY 01/30/2008 @ 12:26am

   I do agree with you not all employers of illegals are bad. As a resident of California everyone knows if you want some quick uncomplicated construction done go down to the home depot they line up to do the job. We have employed quite a few to do odd jobs that needed to be done but we didn't want to get a contractor. BUT on the other hand you make the argument that these people make their problem by taking the job but what other option do they have? Starve? I think compared to dying of hunger and thirst, slavery is the choice but it doesn't make treating people like slaves right. Especially because not all of them COULD leave. Some of them were threatened with violence if they chose to leave, and some were chained down. So don't be so quick to absolve the people treating these people like slaves. Would you absolve slave owners in the south before the Civil War? Blacks could have always left and many tried. But leaving meant possible death.

   Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 01:27am

10. Posted by HAPPY 01/30/2008 @ 12:26am

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

    "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

    With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 01:53am

11. or at least a decent guest worker program.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 01:53am

12. If things keep going like this, we'll all be as bad off as those Brazilian sugar cane choppers who work for Gorge Soros. Let's all have faith that progressives can save us.

    Posted by RAGGEDSTEP at 01/30/2008 @ 07:03am

13. Actually what we're seeing, after reading his lips, is what G.W.B. really meant when he spoke of his "guest worker program" observe what happened to the workers imported into New Orleans after Katrina. They have no protections whatsoever, and are used to bring the mean wage down. Their children who are born here will in time suffer the same net job losses as all other demographics. It is slave labour only now the slaves are imported, ergo, their labour can now be had without the (rather costly) need to re-locate.

    It's human beings, cruelly added to the metals, plastics and other recyclables, it's Fascism.

    Posted by V at 01/30/2008 @ 07:50am

14. Posted by V 01/30/2008 @ 07:50am

    maybe we can consider WTO to be the ultimate neo-liberal guest worker program.

    like i said "decent". our local tomato pickers come back every year. i've spoken with many. it's not perfect but they come back every year.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 08:25am

15. I think you need to direct your attention to Goldman Sachs and the other financal firms that own most of BK's stock.

    Posted by ACOOK 01/29/2008 @ 11:16pm

    Isn't Goldman Sachs a big-time contributer to someone's campaign? Hmmmm....

    Posted by FritztheCat at 01/30/2008 @ 08:33am

16. Looks like somebody was right! Guess who wrote this (originally in German, in 1875):

    "Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of usable goods (and of course, it is of these that weath actually consists!) as labor, which itself is only the expression of a natural power, human labor power. The aforementioned phrase can be found in children's books and is correct if one assumes that work takes place with the tools and materials that it requires. But a socialist program must not allow such bourgeois sayings to conceal the conditions under which they make any sense at all. […] The bourgeoisie has very good reasons to pretend that work has supernatural creative power, because it follows from the natural conditions of work that the human being who has no property except for his own labor power must be, regardless of social and cultural conditions, the slave of other human beings who have made themselves the owners of the materials that work requires. This person cannot work, and therefore cannot live, except with their permission."

    Posted by JakobFabian at 01/30/2008 @ 08:42am

17. Yup. You guessed it. That was Karl Marx.

    The bourgeoisie is up to its old tricks. "Jomamma" has made the kind offer to allow immigrant farm workers to move south again -- where they can be landless as they are here and work for even less than they make here. In "Jomamma's world, a farmer doesn't need any land to farm -- he just waves his arms in the air, and fruit and vegetables appear. As for those farmers who can't make this magic happen, well, they're just lazy.

    Thank God for Bernie Sanders! And thank God for the people who still have some respect for workers and some actual knowledge of the conditions under which they work.

    And may God grant us the wisdom to undo fifty years of steady union-busting legislation and bad trade deals that have created our barbaric economy, in which financial investors are treated like golden geese, while labor and nature -- the true sources of all wealth -- are disparaged and wasted.

    Posted by JakobFabian at 01/30/2008 @ 08:50am

18. JOMAMA and Happy, your comments show your true selves. Greedy and selfish. John you claim to be a Christ follower, but then you type those words. How do you reconcile that? To me it shows that your religion is market place of the lowest denominator. Do you have a trace of humanity left?

    Or, is this what you want out of your world, along with people that want to come to America and search for the Dream only to make 5 bucks a day picking the food you slop into your obese body:

    Published: January 30, 2008

    BEIJING -- When state security agents burst into his apartment last month, Hu Jia was chatting on Skype, the Internet-based telephone system. Mr. Hu's computer was his most potent tool. He disseminated information about human rights cases, peasant protests and other politically touchy topics even though he often lived under de facto house arrest.

    Mr. Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled "Prisoner in Freedom City." Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.

    That ended on Dec. 27. Mr. Hu was dragged away on charges of subverting state power while Ms. Zeng was bathing their newborn daughter, Qianci. Telephone and Internet connections to the apartment were severed. Mother and daughter are now under house arrest. Qianci, barely 2 months old, is probably the youngest political prisoner in China.

    For human rights advocates and Chinese dissidents, Mr. Hu's detention is the most telling example of what they describe as a broadening crackdown on dissent as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August. In recent months, several dissidents have been jailed, including a former factory worker in northeastern China who collected 10,000 signatures after posting an online petition titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics."

    and I notice the Christian Neo-cons have no comments about the slavery taking place in their own country of "freedom".

    Where is Mr. Slavery, PONTIFICUS?

    It is truly sick that John and HAPPYCOWARD will defend someone that makes 152,000,000 a year, and then turn around and blame the people that make $ a day for taking what work they can find after NAFTA fixed our immigration problem.

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/30/2008 @ 09:22am

19. North

    America

    For

    The

    Autocrats

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 09:45am

20. Check this out: Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt

    A heartwarming story (for the likes of JOMAMMA and his ilk).

    Posted by jaded at 01/30/2008 @ 10:29am

21. This person cannot work, and therefore cannot live, except with their permission.-----Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 01/30/2008 @ 08:42am

    Like a "closed shop" or "union shop" factory?

    Posted by Mask at 01/30/2008 @ 10:32am

22. Dear "Mask,"

    Shall I understand that when the bosses close a factory, that's okay, because the workers can always look elsewhere for work; but if trade unionists make a shop union only, then that's not okay, because then the workers have to pay dues?

    God forbid! Next thing you know, they'll be trying to tax us to pay for government services!

    Posted by JakobFabian at 01/30/2008 @ 12:43pm

23. Posted by MASK 01/30/2008 @ 10:32am

    or a "sweat shop"

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 12:54pm

24. I would wager that neither of you has ever been INSIDE a sweatshop.

    Posted by emile duBois at 01/30/2008 @ 1:20pm

25. Posted by EMILE DUBOIS 01/30/2008 @ 1:20pm

    No I haven't have you?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 1:35pm

26. yes.

    Posted by emile duBois at 01/30/2008 @ 1:40pm

27. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 01/30/2008 @ 1:46pm

    As usual you grossly overstate things. She didn't say the Federal Government needs to act. But she said he didn't say anything about the plight. Drawing more attention to the matter would get more people to actively help. As long as it stays under the radar no one cares. If Bush had made mention of it, it would gain these people a little support. Why don't give up more of your rights like right to privacy and right to free speech and we can have the facism you so long for.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 1:53pm

28. .....So don't be so quick to absolve the people treating these people like slaves.....

    Posted by CCCOMFO1 01/30/2008 @ 01:27am

    You need to read my comments (below) more carefully before `firing'! Would I "absolve" people I term "evil and greedy" in the context here?

    ...ALLOWS evil and greedy men to treat some farm workers like dirt....

    Posted by HAPPY 01/29/2008 @ 10:37pm

    Posted by Happy at 01/30/2008 @ 1:55pm

29. LVL & CCCO,

    Also note that there is no hint of what is commonly known.....the "evil and greedy" that commits the sort of "Slavery in the Union", are mostly (earlier generation) immigrants themselves....like Latino on Latino or black on black crimes!

    Here in Texas, almost ALL coyotes (those that smuggle illegal aliens) are Hispanics and when potential troubles loom, they abandon their `cargo'......invariably, some die!

    Posted by Happy at 01/30/2008 @ 2:00pm

30. Posted by HAPPY 01/30/2008 @ 1:55pm

    No matter how you post it, it's still saying that the reason these people are being treated the way they are because they choose to go to work. Never looking at the fact that they have no other choice. It's either that or starve to death.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 2:04pm

31. Also why is it you guys are so about taking responsibility for fixing Iraq, however you guys are about leaving our responsibility for destroying mexico. Is it because we can't milk mexico for anything anymore?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 2:07pm

32. no one is taking responsibility to "fix" Iraq.

    even here the war is spoken of only in the context of Amerika.

    Posted by emile duBois at 01/30/2008 @ 2:11pm

33. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 01/30/2008 @ 08:25am | ignore this person

    Well, we'll just have to wait and see, as the thrust of my post was that eventually it wont be "them," it will be you, and yours ... We'll see how one feels about the W.T.O. then, when you're looking at it from the inside out.

    Posted by V at 01/30/2008 @ 2:26pm

34. Posted by V 01/30/2008 @ 2:26pm

    well, many people here are already living the wto-life.

    at least plastic's cheap.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 01/30/2008 @ 2:36pm

35. .....they have no other choice....

    Posted by CCCOMFO1 01/30/2008 @ 2:04pm

    Look, I'm tiring of this. They have a choice, STAY HOME (like the bulk of their own countrymen), or if they are already in the US, GO BACK HOME!

    Fact that you want to deny, is that these people came voluntarily....another likely fact is that they have probably heard of stories of being mis-treated and decided to take their chances anyway. What is it about folks taking responsibility for their own actions that you Libs just don't get??

    Posted by Happy at 01/30/2008 @ 3:12pm

36. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 01/30/2008 @ 2:36pm | ignore this person

    "well, many people here are already living the wto-life."

    From your point of view, perhaps ... But from the point of view of someone from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador, or Bolivia? I doubt it.

    "at least plastic's cheap."

    Depends on what you pay for it, it can be lot cheaper ...

    Posted by V at 01/30/2008 @ 3:13pm

37. Posted by HAPPY 01/30/2008 @ 3:12

    HAHABHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA funny to hear the from a republican. A group of people who are all about skirting responsibility for actions. You want them to take responsibility but you don't want America to take responsibility for destroying their economy in the first place. Don't make me laugh Happy. When America starts taking responsibility for the damage it has done elsewhere then we will talk.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 3:26pm

38. Posted by HAPPY 01/30/2008 @ 3:12pm | ignore this person Posted by CCCOMFO1 01/30/2008 @ 2:04pm | ignore this person

    Look, don't bother ... k? Happy's not that dumb, well maybe, but that's beside the point. It's one of those things, that if you have to explain it to someone, whether willfully or no, they're not going to get it.

    Because it's really simple; if your survival depended on you putting your arm in one of two holes. One of which results in the cutting off your hand, the other severs your flesh up to the elbow, which would you choose? Happy's logic, based on his posts, is that they actually wanted their hand cut off. If not why didn't they just stay and starve, or watch their children starve like everybody else? Geez ... what's the puzzle?

    (in regards to previous post ** "it can be a lot cheaper" ** )

    Posted by V at 01/30/2008 @ 3:27pm

39. Tell me Happy have you had the joy of going to Tiajuana?

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 3:36pm

40. Posted by JAKOBFABIAN 01/30/2008 @ 12:43pm

    Just thought that was an interest line from Herr Marx....and considering the rather "bourgeoisie" lifestyle that a lot of union leaders live....food for thought?

    Posted by Mask at 01/30/2008 @ 4:35pm

41. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 01/30/2008 @ 5:09pm

    You say it's an immature comment but it is a mirror image of your comment LV.

    "Why don't you folks instead push to amend the constitution, eliminate the 10th amendment, abolish all state authority and you will have your big socialist central government you so long for."

    Eh guess we are both immature. And then I will extend that into the immaturity of presenting the argument:

    BTW, I feel fairly confident that I probably do more to help illegal aliens every week than you have probably done in your life.

    I do more what do you do!

    AND THEN I will show the hypocrisy of your statement: "Yours is just the usual infantile sort of comment I regularly expect from many on the left (not all, but most). Someone identifies themself as conservative and you start tossing out fascist ad hominums"

    "You will have your big socialist central government you so long for."

    Seems any time someone identifies themselves as a liberal you resort to infantile comments about how all they want is socialism. Maybe you should start taking some of your oh so grandiose advice and step down off your high horse. i purposefully mirrored your comments LV and you took the bait. Grow up, you're 60 and your resorting to the types of comments I would expect from someone my age. The day you stop calling every liberal a socialist is the day I will stop baiting conservatives by calling them facists.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 5:29pm

42. "BTW, I feel fairly confident that I probably do more to help illegal aliens every week than you have probably done in your life."

    I can do anything you can do better. I can do anything better than you. No you can't! Yes I can! (Fun Music)

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 5:39pm

43. I think there's a valid point that Happy wanted to make, but he made it really badly; V actually made the argument much better. Here's the argument:

    A situation in which illegal immigration isn't really controlled is seen as opening up opportunities for people who can't get good jobs back home in Mexico. They may be lured by the promise of something better, or even if they hear that it's not heaven, still gamble that it'll be better than what they have at home. The ACTUAL argument here isn't (or shouldn't be) "they chose this, they're responsible for it." The better argument is "a system which disregards illegal immigration is ridiculously cruel because it lures people into these horrible situations." That's why punishing people who hire and exploit illegal immigrants is absolutely justified.

    Posted by Thrawn at 01/30/2008 @ 5:58pm

44. Posted by LVLIBERTY1 01/30/2008 @ 6:28pm

    Then I won't stop calling you a fascist. Guess we are still both equally immature, at least according to your definition fo the situation.

    Posted by Cccomfo1 at 01/30/2008 @ 6:47pm

45. A situation in which illegal immigration isn't really controlled is seen as opening up opportunities for people who can't get good jobs back home in Mexico.

    try not getting ANY job back home. let's face it, you and I would do the same thing, in order to feed our families.

    tear down the fence, open the borders, north and south.

    Posted by emile duBois at 01/30/2008 @ 8:14pm

46. hmmm, not one of the compassionate conservative Christians is bothered that a business has been indicted for holding people prisoner. Did any of you read the Miami Herald story?

    Early Nov. 19, a disaffected worker named Mariano Lucas hung from the ceiling inside the box truck's cargo hold, punched his way through a ventilator hatch and scrambled to freedom. Two others also escaped. They took their story to the Collier County Sheriff's Office.

    Deputies and federal immigration agents raided the house on Nov. 26, finding a dozen more workers living in the back of the truck, in the vans and in a wooden shed hardly fit for goats. On Dec. 5, brothers Cesar, Geovanni and Jose Navarrete and their mother, Virginia, were indicted in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers on charges of ''harboring illegal aliens.'' The term ''harboring'' was a tepid euphemism for the crimes described in the federal complaint.

    The workers trapped on the Navarrete work crew told of a harrowing existence, forced to work for meager wages while accruing charges for two meager meals a day, with extra charges tacked on for beer, soda, even water, until the debits outstrapped their wages.

    Quitting was no option. Anyone who attempted to leave the Navarretes, they said, were hunted down, beaten, brought back to the slave house.

    And, what some of you advocate, the collective walk out, is the formation of a .... union!!

    Posted by crabwalk at 01/30/2008 @ 10:13pm

47. Bernie Sanders is right -- it's not about the money. A penny a pound??? FastFood can pick up the cost or pass it on to the customer. Either way: "You want any Pride with that?" Yeah, I need at least a shred. But a Whopper-with-Shame just tastes like... pennies. So, Big Mac is the King until BK bellies up for the Immokalee Workers.

    Posted by Robert Fuld at 01/31/2008 @ 10:32am

48. Burger King Holdings Inc. said Thursday its second-quarter profit jumped 29 percent

    share it with the workers? no fuckin' way

    Posted by emile duBois at 01/31/2008 @ 11:50am

49. Of course no fuckin' way--sharing it with the workers is absolutely counterintuitive. As Naomi Klein puts it in No Logo,

    Politicians may say that jobs are their priority, but the stock market responds cheerfully every time mass layoffs are announced, and sinks gloomily whenever it looks as if workers might get a raise. Whatever bizarre route we took to get here, an unmistakable message now emanates from our free markets: good jobs are bad for business, bad for "the economy" and should be avoided at all cost.

    Posted by joyfulspark at 01/31/2008 @ 9:51pm

50. dead silence from the Finger Freedom fighters regarding the holding of people against their will in America. $1,000,000,000,000 to "free" Iraq. Zero to free people in the back yard.

    Sad, shameless neo-conservatives.

    Posted by crabwalk at 02/01/2008 @ 07:31am

51. Where is PONTIFLOGIC when the actual discussion of slavery is taking place?

    Still lost in a cul-de-sac?

    Posted by crabwalk at 02/01/2008 @ 07:32am

52. Sad, shameless neo-conservatives.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/01/2008 @ 10:10am

53. I have been to Immokolee, worked in the health clinic as a nurse occasionally back in the 80's, filling in for staff shortages. I was limited by my language but there is no doubt that these people have been living in poor conditions. They were just trying to survive as they still are. They are trapped and I know these stories are just scratching the surface. There was a suit settled recently regarding babies born to farm workers that were born without limbs and it was found that they were forced to pick crops too soon after spraying pesticides. Also, there are higher rates of prostate cancer with this exposure in farmers. I can only interpret this as the workers, not the owners of the fields. This abuse has been going as long as I can remember. Finally, attention has been brought to this. As long as we are spending billions in Iraq and wasting money in subsidies for industrial agriculture and the owners who live in Manhattan, we can afford to help these people. They provide the food on our table, they put the roof on our houses. They are hard workers who want the same as we do, to provide a good life for their family. I vote to welcome them, assist them with healthcare and education and protection. These are not the people begging for money in my neighborhood. Let them register without fear and give them the respect they deserve for the courage they had to escape to a better life. Shame on us as a country! We are the violators of human rights! I want to live in a country that values all living beings. What does it say when we slap Micheal Vicks on the hand for his treatment of animals or allow the poor treatment of animals that end up on your table. What does this say about our consciousness? It is far too easy too ignore the unacceptable if it isn't right under your nose and in your face. I believe we are our brothers keeper and I am speaking out! Now I have to find a way to make a difference besides being vegetarian and organic.

    Posted by casper at 02/02/2008 @ 10:40am

54. What does this say about our consciousness? It is far too easy too ignore the unacceptable if it isn't right under your nose and in your face. I believe we are our brothers keeper and I am speaking out! Now I have to find a way to make a difference besides being vegetarian and organic.

    Posted by CASPER 02/02/2008 @ 10:40am

    thanks, brother.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 02/03/2008 @ 12:46pm

55. Does anyone think it's a mere coincidence that this is going on in the state where the pres.'s brother is gov. How else would anyone be able to get away with slavery. You think the white house doesn't know about this? think again. This is allowed to happen because there is a link from slavery to nazi (usa) to skull and bones to freemasons to the illuminati. A lot of people think that the power of fraternal orders are bullcrap, but they are real and controlling the way we all live in the US. The war in Iraq is no accident and neither is slavery in Florida. The immigrants who end up trapped in Florida are making the same or better money than they would in their homelands. That is the political ratification. We all as americans need to get caught up with the big picture. Haliburton in Iraq is outsourcing to third world countries to rebuild everything the US is blowing up. They are paying those people the same wages they would be making in their own homelands. The US has made their homelands unlivable and offer a great job somewhere else. The workers see it as a way out of their crappy homelands. Same as the workers who end up working for slave wages in Florida. Some people are prob'ly thinking, "hey, slaves get *hit done." True. But, slaves also grow strong, organize and fight for freedom. Look at the history of this wonderful country, built by terrorists who were slave owners. They taught their house slaves how to function in this country. They grew so powerful that one of their decendants is running for president. Nothing happens in this country by mistake.

    Posted by standingstill at 02/04/2008 @ 7:20pm

56. Does anyone think it's a mere coincidence that this is going on in the state where the pres.'s brother is gov. How else would anyone be able to get away with slavery. You think the white house doesn't know about this? think again. This is allowed to happen because there is a link from slavery to nazi (usa) to skull and bones to freemasons to the illuminati. A lot of people think that the power of fraternal orders are bullcrap, but they are real and controlling the way we all live in the US. The war in Iraq is no accident and neither is slavery in Florida. The immigrants who end up trapped in Florida are making the same or better money than they would in their homelands. That is the political ratification. We all as americans need to get caught up with the big picture. Haliburton in Iraq is outsourcing to third world countries to rebuild everything the US is blowing up. They are paying those people the same wages they would be making in their own homelands. The US has made their homelands unlivable and offer a great job somewhere else. The workers see it as a way out of their crappy homelands. Same as the workers who end up working for slave wages in Florida. Some people are prob'ly thinking, "hey, slaves get *hit done." True. But, slaves also grow strong, organize and fight for freedom. Look at the history of this wonderful country, built by terrorists who were slave owners. They taught their house slaves how to function in this country. They grew so powerful that one of their decendants is running for president. Nothing happens in this country by mistake.

    Posted by standingstill at 02/04/2008 @ 7:26pm