Immigration appeals to the nation’s hearts and minds in coming months

The fight over revamping our nation’s immigration policies into something that makes sense is going to become a battle for the hearts and minds of our society, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is likely to become a visible part of it.

The Washington Post reported this week how Democrats are trying to plot a strategy by which they will present an image to sway people over to backing the desire of President Barack Obama to revamp immigration policies in ways to prevent families from being split by deportation.

IT’S GOING TO be a bi-lingual approach. There will be many appeals to people to whom Spanish is a significant language in their lives.

It likely will be along those lines that Gutierrez, who long has urged the need for serious reform and was upset at how long it took Obama to act, and other members of Congress will be explaining just how detrimental it really is to our society to let the conservative ideologues have their desires of a policy that stresses deportation over all other changes.

The point being that conservatives who are counting on a new Republican majority over all of Congress to tout their nativist desires are going to be throwing out their own share of rhetoric about the evils of Obama using his executive order powers to implement some changes without Congressional approval.

Admittedly, it would be better if Congress would act on a comprehensive plan to fix the flaws in immigration laws that turn it into a bureaucratic nightmare for those who have to endure it.

BUT THE REPEATED failure of Republicans in Congress in recent years to even consider the issue gave Obama the moral high ground to take some action – one that various polls show a majority of people can support.

The ideologues, however, will want to believe their minority viewpoint is the one that represents the thoughts of all people. If Obama isn’t careful, too many people will come to view their twisted line of logic as fact – just as there are those who ought to know better when it comes to health care reform.

That was an issue where backers of making health insurance more readily available were not aggressive enough, and wound up letting the opposition dominate the debate with their trash talk.

Gutierrez & Company are meant to prevent the same from happening with immigration reform. There also will be the case that Spanish debate will wind up being dominated by the Obama backers – unless Republicans can start finding Latinos capable of badmouthing immigration reform with a straight face.

THAT’S SOMETHING NOT likely to happen!

The trash talk has already started. On Thursday, the GOP-run House of Representatives gave its support to a measure expressing its opposition to Obama on immigration reform. It is a measure that the (for another month) Democrat-led Senate will ignore.

At least it isn’t any of the nonsense talk about defunding the federal government to cause a shutdown of services to the public.

Although the Washington Post reported how there is talk of acting early in 2015 to cut off funding to the Department of Homeland Security for programs that relate to immigration law.

IT SEEMS THE ideologues are hoping they can get people all worked up against Obama so that if there is a future government shutdown, people might be inclined to blame Obama for it.

Even though history shows that whenever Republicans try to shut down government services for ideological reasons, the public sees through the tactic and winds up blaming the Party of Reagan (who himself is probably rolling over in his California grave at the short-mindedness of his alleged ideological colleagues).

How else to explain the nonsense lawsuit that got filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas that seeks to have a federal judge strike down Obama’s executive order? Sixteen other states, including the knuckleheaded Hoosiers and Cheeseheads to the east and north of Illinois, joined in that lawsuit.

I just can’t see any federal judge attuned to the realities of life in south Texas – where it is the Mexican-Americans who are the majority of people and where it is blatantly obvious that the U.S./Mexico border used to be significantly to the north of the Rio Grande – having the nerve to go along with such xenophobic tripe.

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Four days ‘til we fall off the cliff?

Will these people be able to reach agreement with the President?

We’ve had a lot of rhetoric in recent weeks about how we’re doomed financially. Our government in the District of Columbia is incapable of doing much of anything when it comes to compromise.

The dreaded “fiscal cliff” is just a few days away (Monday into Tuesday, to be exact). We’re going to see actions forced upon us that will drive our economy back into recession.

OF COURSE, THE ideologues (many of whom are among the hardest-core of those refusing to do anything) will try to claim it’s all Barack Obama’s fault! Which seems like what they really want to do – place blame on the president whom they didn’t vote for either time and are determined to see end his time in office in utter failure.

Those of us who are a little more rational in our thought process will realize that blame needs to be placed all the way around.

Yet I have to admit that my quarter-century of watching politicos as a reporter-type person has given me a perspective that has me thinking that all is not lost yet.

Because government officials tend to behave like “C-level” college students who insist in majoring in procrastination. How many papers do they write on the final weekend prior to its being due?

NOW THAT WE’RE approaching the final weekend before the deadline, this is the time period in which I expect to see any serious movement toward trying to reach a financial deal that would avert the significant tax increases that would be mandated unless officials can reach agreement on spending cuts.

The fact that any solution concocted during the weekend and voted on by Congress on Monday prior to that ball dropping in Times Square will be a rush-job will make it the equivalent of that college paper that ultimately got a “C” because nobody put any serious long-term thought into it.

Instead, it is just a short-term solution that likely will cause more problems than it resolves – even if it technically averts the fall off the cliff!

Not that I’m saying we should take the plunge and accept whatever hit comes along with it. We’re not Wile E. Coyote in the cartoons – we can’t get hit with an anvil and just bounce back into shape.

SO WE’RE LIKELY to get a mediocre solution put together – one bailed together with scotch tape (perhaps purchased from the “Scotch Tape store” from that old Saturday Night Live sketch?) that will make those of us who pay attention shudder.

While the masses just sort of shrug their shoulders and try to figure out how they’re going to pay off all those charge card bills they incurred during the soon-to-be complete holiday season.

Although I suspect the real motivation for many of our government officials will be to reach a solution that allows them to be out of D.C. and back home in time for whatever New Year’s Eve celebration plans they had in mind.

The only real fear is those people who are so stubbornly determined to do nothing. Because some of those ideological nitwits are more than willing to see everyone suffer around them.

THE THING IS the concept of the “fiscal cliff” is supposed to be a deterrent. It is supposed to be something so incredibly awful and horrid that political people would fear it. They would do anything to avoid it.

Yet those of us in Illinois see the way our redistricting goes – the process that ultimately gives control of the process to the winner of a random lottery.

Instead of fearing the prospect of getting nothing, political partisans greedily stand by their principles because they think they can win the lottery and TAKE EVERYTHING!!!!!

That same mentality is at work among some in Washington these days – and I’m sure they’re the only ones who enjoyed the New York Post front page on Thursday. That’s the one that figured out a way to get a picture of a girl in a bikini to illustrate the “fiscal cliff” story. Ugh!!!

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EXTRA: Some people just like to make things more complex than they truly are

For a routine maneuver that should be fairly straightforward, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District managed on Thursday to come up with a way of complicating a deal.

Among the many acts of business the water district’s commissioners had to deal with when they met was to approve the process by which they seek bids to buy new kitchen equipment for the cafeteria located in their Near North Side offices, at 100 E. Erie St.

 NOTE THAT WE’RE not talking about awarding a contract. Merely seeking bids.

In short, getting a price from anyone interested in selling the kitchen equipment to the water district so that officials can figure out who will give them the best deal.

It should be a routine matter of advertising for bids for items that include an oven, a grill, a deep fryer and a steam table.

Yet when it comes to political people, they just have a knack for complicating things – which is why the water district ultimately decided to defer any action on seeking a price.

NOT APPROVING A contract. But trying to shop.

The confusion got amped up in part by water district Commissioner Cynthia Santos, who said she wants assurances that whatever kitchen equipment the district buys for their cafeteria will be capable of preparing “healthier meals.”

Which to my sensibility is a new excuse. It’s the stove’s fault that all the food being served is, as the old cliché goes, “deep fried and dipped in chocolate.” The kitchen staff, or types of food being bought, have nothing to do with it! (Heavy sarcasm most definitely intended here).

Although I think water district Commissioner Frank Avila put the issue in proper perspective when he mockingly said that purchasing new kitchen equipment was going to force the politicos who oversee the sewage treatment plants for the Chicago area to go on “vegan diets” and “eliminate deep fried food” they may be eating too much of these days.

AND FOR THOSE of you good-government geeky types who get into contractual numbers, this particular project is to replace cafeteria equipment that was installed in 1985.

Water district officials hope that purchasing new kitchen equipment won’t cost them more than $42,500, and they’re hoping that the project will be complete by year’s end.

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