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Finally, someone has woke up and understood that this is America, and the only way this country can remain a melting pot of various nationalities is if we have a unifying language in public places.  It is with great hope that Target does not cave in to the backlash, but stands firm on their decision to promote English only.  

http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002739.html

A new Target store in Columbia Heights in Washington DC decided to only put English signs in its store. Woe the backlash from the community who sees this as racist and being against Latinos who are demanding bilingual signs. Hmmm, OK let’s take their argument a little further. Why not trilingual signs? I mean if this isn’t about race from their side then all the signs should be in every language, not just a second copy in Spanish only. Right?

The arguments in this article at Campus Progress (an oxymoron if any there were for an article on economic progress being slowed by race baiters) would have you believe that this a white conspiracy to impose ethnic cleansing on the community. That the owners of Target hate Latinos and that they’ll soon be loaded onto cattle trains for the gas chambers.

Despite the fact that Columbia Heights has a high Spanish-speaking population, the store has no bilingual signs. Given the demographics of Columbia Heights, Target’s decision sends a clear message: This store is for the new Columbia Heights, not the current Columbia Heights. …

That’s right, the trains are lining up. They’ll be dropping off rich white people and exporting poor Latino people.

The absence of bilingual signs in the new Target (which has enshrined its interior with red-and-white framed displays of cheerful multiethnic people) is disconcerting given the store’s immediate vicinity. According to the D.C. Office on Latino Affairs, nearly half of the District’s Latino community lives in Ward One, which includes the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Mount Pleasant, and Adams Morgan. … The Office of Latino Affairs also estimates that one in three Latinos in the District has difficulty with English. The neighborhood around the new Target abounds with Latino culture. … 14th St. NW immediately to the north contains numerous establishments with almost exclusively Spanish signage. …

They really would like Target to have exclusively Spanish signs. That is evident, but they can’t come out and say that. So instead they say a lack of Spanish anywhere is racist. I’d also like to point out that they say that only 1/3rd of Latinos in the area have difficulty with English. So the reality is that they want to perpetuate Spanish. Spanish speakers, according to them, are too dumb to look down an aisle and see whether it contains mops or canned foods.

Target’s signage is fodder for community activists who say that the Target and other new stores are being built mostly for the sake of Columbia Heights’ future residents, not its current ones.

There they go again with the “round ‘em up” conspiracy statements.

What do the “Latino community leaders” (note that they aren’t American community leaders, but those who only care about Latinos not Americans as a whole) have to say? What do those in ivory towers - who probably don’t even live near this run-down community - have to say?

… “They have a responsibility to the community. A large portion of their clientele is Latino,” [George Escobar, media spokesperson for the Office on Latino Affairs] said. “There have been mixed messages, though. We have to have a wait-and-see attitude with them.” Walda Katz-Fishman, a professor of sociology at Howard University, was less guarded in her assessment about Target’s choice to only display signs in English. “This represents a transition of who is living in the neighborhood. They are not sensitive to the community. The project is for the people who are coming in, not community residents,”

*Choo Choo*

More talk of ending the glorious ghetto that currently exists and improving the community and this portion of America as a bad thing continues below.

… Parisa Norouzi, co-director of Empower DC, an organization that assists lower-income District residents with housing, child services, and government accountability, was also pessimistic about the signs. “The lack of bilingual signs is indicative of who the development project was planned for,” Norouzi said. “If the Target was planned to serve the residents of the community, [accommodations, including signs] would have been a major factor. This is a good example of a major realtor feeling they have no need to serve their community.”

Amazing how having no Spanish on the signs could cause such an uproar isn’t it? Well, not really.

For at least the past decade these “Latino groups” have been trying to play a guilt card against Americans. They are trying to play on the guilt of past things in American history such as slavery that some Americans still carry, even though no American born in this country alive today has owned a slave or lived in an America where slavery was legal. They’re trying to say that America - the most diverse country on Earth - is racist. And they are saying that we should bow down before their demands in order to prove that we’re not.

Target attempts to defend itself by pointing out it has Latino employees and even some that are bilingual. Obviously that is not enough though for these racists. They want it all in Spanish or they’re going to string you up and try to ruin your business. And now we come to the most idiotic statement in the whole of this “article”. The last question in the paragraph below.

Target Spokesperson Elizabeth Wolf argues that Target’s commitment to diversity is evident in the relevance of items the store carries and the level of respect it gives its diverse guests. … Wolf stressed that Target employs team members who are available to answer question from Spanish-speaking guests. But how accommodating can Spanish-speaking team members be when nothing in the store is written in Spanish?

How accommodating indeed! I mean we must have everything written in Spanish. All items sold in the store must have everything written in Spanish on it as well because, you know, a bilingual employee there couldn’t possibly help you if it’s not written in Spanish on the can or on the sign.

.. the store’s decision not to include bilingual signage reflects the deeper fears of certain residents and observers: that the real question about Target and Columbia Heights gentrification isn’t whether it will have short-term benefits, but rather whether, in the long run, it will severely reduce the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the neighborhood by spurring the development of more luxury and upper-class housing. Target’s weak grasp on neighborhood demographics is unlikely to assuage these fears.

Wow, we wouldn’t want to actually improve an area. I mean making it cleaner and nicer would ruin the good old ghetto feel of the area.

I have a suggestion to those who don’t speak English, don’t want to learn English, find it frustrating that American stores aren’t providing Spanish signs or those who are appalled at this situation of lack of bilingual signs. That suggestion is that they can choose to go to a place where everything is in Spanish. Where everyone speaks Spanish. Where all the people are Latinos. Where they will feel at home.

That’s right! There are already countries that have exactly the setup that you want! They have all your demands already met! Move there and stop being a ridiculous and ignorant fool who demands others change because you are offended that they don’t do it all exactly how you want it to be.

That is of course unless you actually have an ulterior motive, like trying to take over large swaths of the United States that will then only allow one race there. An area that only speaks a language other than English and discriminates against all others. In that case, why not just state it outright, because your “articles” and statements above are quite obvious in their intent. That you want segregation, but segregation where your race gets more than everyone else and the rest of the country is left to suffer.

March 14, 2008

GM is recalling 207,542 Buick Regal and Pontiac Grand Prix sedans due to risk they could catch fire.  They warn owners to not park them in garages until the problem is fixed.

Frontera Nortesur

Building on a cross-border educational initiative, Mexico’s federal government plans to expand educational and vocational training programs Mexican migrants in the United States. Speaking at an educational and economic development conference in Mexico last week, Mexican Education Minister Josefina Vazquez Mota said the administration of President Felipe Calderon plans to open an additional 100 community education centers to serve the migrant population in the US. The functionary also announced that Mexico will open a similar educational facility in Canada for the first time.

And just who will pay for these centers? You guessed it, it will be funded by the American tax payers.  It is saddening that these centers will be built in the United States and not in Mexico where they could benefit all the children in Mexico.  Millions of children are left behind as one or more of their parents travel to the United States for work each year.  Having additional educational measures put into place in Mexico for those unfortunate children would be highly beneficial, with this latest move by the ever failing Mexican educational system, once again the children of Mexico are overlooked and kept in the shadows.

The purpose of the centers is two-fold. Besides providing basic and secondary education skills, the program aim to professionalize the work skills of migrants.  Certification programs will be made available for Las Angeles gardeners, New York restaurant industry employees, California cosmetologists and Wisconsin diary workers, Vazquez said, adding that better education and economic competitiveness are linked together by the ties between the three member states of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

This again is no more then a low income wage game played combined with a push for the NAU. They will be certifying people to cut lawns and bus tables?  For American’s wanting to get certification for these type of jobs? Well since they are being offered only to Mexicans, American’s will be out of luck. This truly is a waste of American tax payer money, and a smack in the face for Mexican’s living in Mexico who could benefit much better from these services being provided to them.

March 11, 2008

New York Times

Workers Sue Gulf Coast Company That Imported Them

by Adam Nossiter

NEW ORLEANS — A group of 500 foreign welders and pipefitters brought in to work at Gulf Coast oil rig yards after Hurricane Katrina said Monday that they had sued their employer, claiming they were lured with false promises of permanent-resident status, forced to live in inhumane conditions and then threatened when they protested.

The workers were recruited in India and the United Arab Emirates and brought in late 2006 and early 2007 under the government’s temporary guest worker program. They worked at Signal International, an oil-rig repair and construction company with yards in Pascagoula, Miss., about 85 miles east of here, and in Orange, Tex., about 100 miles east of Houston.

The company said it had brought them in to supplement a labor force depleted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

At a rally here Monday, workers and their lawyers said they had given up life savings, sold family jewelry and paid up to $20,000 in immigration and travel fees after being assured that the company would help them to become permanent residents of the United States.

In a statement, the company called the workers’ charges “baseless and unfounded” and said it had spent “over $7 million constructing state-of-the-art housing complexes” for the workers. The company said that the “vast majority of the workers” recruited had been satisfied with their conditions and that the workers were being paid “in excess” of prevailing rates and in full compliance with the law.

Workers and their advocates disputed those assertions. Ignorant of American immigration law, advocates said, the workers were unaware that they had been brought in only temporarily.

“They didn’t know they were guest workers,” said Stephen Boykewich of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. “They thought they were getting permanent status.”

The green cards enabling residency never materialized, according to the lawsuit, and the workers were forced to live in overcrowded guarded “bunkhouses” at Signal International, with inadequate toilets and unhygienic kitchens that frequently made them ill.

The class-action lawsuit was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Ala., among other groups.

The workers’ assertions are the latest in a series of complaints about exploitation of foreign laborers on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.

Previous complaints have involved Hispanic hotel and construction workers and farm laborers and have centered on low pay and harsh working conditions.

In the summer of 2006, Hispanic hotel workers sued a prominent New Orleans developer over inadequate pay, and last month, fruit pickers walked off the job in a parish north of here over exploitative conditions.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has also sued on behalf of immigrant workers involved in the reconstruction and cleanup of New Orleans after the storm. It maintains that immigrants brought in under the guest worker program are “systematically exploited and abused,” all over the country.

March 11, 2008

DETROIT - About 60 members of Detroit municipal unions have been picketing before Mayor Kwarne Kilpatrick’s State of the city address, urging his resignation or ouster.

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clickondetroit

March 10, 2008

Sen. Byron Dorgan, (Dem-N.C.) has called for an investigation by the Government Accountability Office to determine whether the Transportation Department has broken the law by spending federal funds on a program allowing Mexican trucks on U.S. roads.

This call came just hours after Transportation Secretary Mary Peters warned of economic losses if Mexican trucks were prohibited from driving deep into the United States.  Peters has been busy fighting in court to prevent the program’s end, disregarding that Congress prohibited spending money on the program last year.

NAFTA granted Mexican trucks greater access to U.S. roads beginning in 1995.  When the pilot program began in September only a few trucks were agreed upon.  Without the program at all, Mexican trucks are confined to only 20 miles beyond the border where the goods they bring in are picked up by U.S. drivers to carry the final U.S. destination.

Dorgan firmly states that the agency is violating the Antideficiency Act with their current policy, an act which prohibits spending federal money which has not been authorized or appropriated.

Peters claims the agency is not violating any law as the law, according to her, prohibits using funds to establish the program, but that the money is being used on the existing program.

This argument is the same as was given in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who are considering an appeal by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to stop the program all together.

In much the same way that a bad marriage is not healthy if one partner is in it for what they can get out of it, and the other is co-dependent on that partner. Illegal immigration is unhealthy for the co-dependent country involved.

Almost daily we hear how our crashing economy is causing an exodus of illegals returning to their homelands when the work, money, and handouts runs out. Many of these are represented in the media as hardship stories built to display the “poor undocumented worker”, “poor businesses”, and in some cases “poor community” who are being affected by the loss. While no one can dispute the effect this loss has on those elements, they are in essence, no different then those who are co-dependent marriage partners who suddenly find themselves struggling to learn to survive.

What needs to be understood, and understood firmly, is that illegal immigrants are not here “for better or for worse”. They will not hang around when this country struggles. They will not hang around if the country falls. Their loyalty is not to this country at all and they will return home to the place their loyalty lies, or move on to another country that has what they desire. In this case money, work, and someone to take care of them.

American citizens and many legal immigrants have a deep loyalty to the United States. No matter how hard it gets in the nation, they will hold on, they will struggle through, and they will work to improve the situation of the home they love unconditionally. “For better or for worse” is not even a thought for them, it’s a way of life.

Just as one would not support a loved on, or friend in an unhealthy relationship. America needs to not support this unhealthy relationship that’s been created by illegal immigrants and their advocates. Americans need to support and advocate for healthy relationships with Citizens and legal immigrants who had a deep unseated love for this country. Who will stick with her through thick and thin, no matter how thin it gets. It is that, and that alone that makes for a healthy relationship and a healthy nation.
As for the “woe is me” tales, well just like the co-dependent partner learns to live again. These co-dependent individuals, businesses, and communities will also learn to live again. In many cases they will learn to be stronger, stabler, and healthier then before when they were in the unhealthy relationship. In some cases they might not ever break the bonds of co-dependency but above all they will learn what the signs of co-dependency are and be able to advocate against it, while helping awake other co-dependents to be able to survive the “life without” too.

Hispanic exodus is under way
Workers leave Lee as jobs disappear
The News Press
March 9, 2008

In this case, cold, hard statistics don’t tell the story.

“I am not aware of anyone who would track that locally,” said Glen Solier, business development specialist for the Lee County Department of Economic Development.

“Those people are off the grid. Undocumented,” said Susanna Patterson, economic analyst for the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation.

But the oh-so-human snapshots of everyday living are revealing.

Like a weekend soccer league down from 32 teams to 25 because more than 100 players have had to leave.

Or a church that has cut two Sunday services to one because about 200 former members have returned to their homeland.

Or the western-wear clothier who gave up one of his three shopping center units and said business is off by 40 percent because customers are gone.

Put these and other pictures together and the collage tells the story of Hispanics who are leaving Southwest Florida to find work or to return to the support of their families back home.

“There is a loss in the number of Hispanics in our communities,” said Robert Selle, director of the Amigos Center, which aids Hispanics with immigration issues and offers other services in Lee County. “The underlying reason is economic; the same reason they came here in the first place.”

Population drain

The loss comes from a good portion of Lee County’s population. The U.S. Census Bureau listed the county’s Hispanic population at more than 90,000 - about 16 percent of Lee’s 571,000 population - in 2006.

What the statistics further show is that work is gone. Unemployment in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral region has risen this past year, from 2.7 percent to 6.3 percent.

Many of the lost jobs are in construction, which has been put on hold as the sluggish market struggles with a glut of unsold houses.

Because many Hispanic construction workers are believed to be illegal immigrants, because construction and agricultural workers are a mobile population anyway, because many are single with families back in their native lands, and because their leaving was often spur-of-the-moment, no governmental or social service agency is keeping accurate records of this exodus.

Lee County School District reported a loss of Hispanics in all grades totaling 388 pupils through January of this school year - this after growing by almost 3,000 Hispanic students a year earlier.

But the white student population dropped as well. The big difference was while dropout rates tend to increase as the year goes on in the upper grades, the Hispanic population was the only one also to lose ground in the kindergarten through fifth-grade range. It fell by 87 pupils - an indication their families moved from the district, according to Michael Smith, director of planning, growth and school capacity.

“Many workers in the construction industry and related industry are leaving the area and following the money,” said Barbara Hartman, spokeswoman for the state’s Career and Service Center in Fort Myers. “It seems to be an increasing number of people who are temporarily relocating. I wish we did track that.”

Hartman said she knows people are leaving because they tell counselors when they come in seeking work, saying they need the higher construction industry wages, which begin at $10 to $11 an hour for the most unskilled, to maintain their standard of living……..

March 10, 2008

Boeing has serious concerns regarding the fairness of the competition, inconsistency in requirements, cost factors and treatment of Boeing’s commercial data in regards to a contract to replace 179 air-to-air refueling tankers when the contract went to the European Aeronautic Defence and Space and Northrop Grumman rather then Boeing.

This is just the being of the first major Air Force contract to replace its entire fleet of 600 aging tankers over the next 30 years. If Boeing should chose to file a formal protest with the Government Accountability Office by the deadline this Wednesday, it could delay execution of the tanker contract by nearly a year.

Here is hoping that Boeing makes the right decision in the best interest of the American people and America protection, and gets the paperwork filed on time.

America is counting on them.

With the recent uproar over Boeing losing a to a overseas business to create a major airplane for the U.S. Air Force.  Few of those involved realize that even when Boeing does obtain big contracts they don’t make all the plane.  In fact the majority of all of Boeing planes are created overseas.

What a wake up call that the U.S. needs to start focusing on jobs at home, and stop feeding the global cash cow.  There is no excuse for why we should not be making all our plane parts in the United States.  There has long been a lesson taught by ancestors of all nationalities.  Take care of the home first, then worry about the rest of the world, and right now the U.S. needs all the taking care of it can get.
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