Comment Archives: stories: Opinion: Serraglio
Re: “Serraglio”
Israel successfully controls its borders with walls and fences considerably lower than fifty feet. Only the most foolish terrorist or illegal migrant thinks about a fifty-one foot ladder. Israeli politicians respond to their citizens' concerns about crime, loss of national identity, terrorism and other trivial things by enforcing the law. And how.
Had Romney won 100% of the Latino vote he would have still lost the election. By refusing to address concerns about immigration and affirmative action he failed to energize white voters. That's why he lost. Nice people don't talk about such things, nor win elections.
While it's true 40% of illegals are visa overstayers they are still in violation of U.S. law. They lied about their intentions when they signed documents applying for a visa. Pull a stunt like that in Japan and see what happens.
There are tax payers and tax eaters. See if you can tell which is which. 57% of legal immigrants from Mexico receive needs-based assistance (though mere pikers when compared to immigrants from the Dominican Republic, 82% of whom are on welfare). 6% of legal immigrants from Germany (well, of course they're legal) are on welfare. 'Huge contributions' indeed.
George Borjas, the leading labor economist in the U.S., has proven immigration, legal and illegal, drives down wages for all sectors of the U.S. labor force, even those with college degrees. But who cares about that? Who cares that U.S. wages, adjusted for inflation, have not improved since the 1970s? Everyone knows the economic law that increased supply results in lowered price is suspended when it comes to labor.
There are five billion people in the world poorer than the average Mexican. That's a threat. Allowing them, any of them, to come here only impoverishes us. If Mr. Serraglio actually cared as much about the environment and about the quality of life in Arizona as he pretends to he would support deportation and population restriction.
Re: “Serraglio”
Meant to say foreign workers FOR JOBS that pay so little Americans won't do them.
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And how would we manage foreign workers in an orderly fashion? Make them wear ankle bracelets? Ask them to line up for roll call every Monday morning? If we placed an order with Mexico for 4 million workers and 10 million want to come, how many do you think we'd get? (My guess is 10 million - 4 million through the front door legally and 6 million the same way we've been getting them all along.) And doesn't anyone see anything wrong with bringing in foreign workers that pay so little that Americans won't do them? Where's a Democrat when we need one? I thought Dems were looking out for the common people who lack the skills for high-paying jobs.
Re: “Serraglio”
The last 2 paragraphs are probably good ideas. Probably. Sadly these will not gain traction where it matters. "They" will not pass sensible immigration reform without better border security, and "they" will not fund border security. And "they" seem scared to death of the drugs
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Spoken as a true illegal supporter, we need border security to keep more illegals from coming in and drug runners/terrorists out and I'm sorry I cannot see any contribution they make to our society, other then sending what should be going to our national tax fund back to their home countries. This is not a political problem with the American citizen, this is their jobs, their pay and their quality of public education and if you value your peacefulness, then you must want border security because with out it we risk the violence of the drug cartels spilling into your neighborhood.
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This is framed as the classic pistol held to the head of a kitten to signify how awful things will go for the innocents.
The real issue is the ridiculously Stagnant & Still City and County parks bureaucrats. Grey, Payon, whoever runs the failed stadium, Tom Moulton, the Pima Sports Authority- which we have neither of-are just a short list of bloated do-nothings that make 100-200k plus car, benefits, and pension.
That's a lot of Miss Aimees and a lot of pot holes.
Why; if pools are closed, golf courses closed, Pima County Attractions closed or subsidised, significantly fewer employees to supervise, would these blokes merit this kind of pay? How would that work in the free market for them?
Give it back. To Aimee.
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Thanks. I know tons of kids, including my own, that went to Movers & Shakers.
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Great column. I won't be getting vaccinated either, but it seems to make sense to use the hand-washing strategy for limiting risk. However, most of the patrons at LA Fitness think that's just a bunch of baloney. They move from one piece of equipment to the next without a moment's concern for themselves and others. Using the FREE wipes and sanitizer which are available throughout the facility is out of the question to the unwashed masses there.
I suspect they're the same folks who'll say we need to continue with completely unrestricted animal experimentation because "we need to find cures for duh-zeezes in yoomin beans."
Re: “Serraglio”
When I first moved from Tucson to Nebraska in '95 I had a flu shot and that year I got a horrible bout of the flu (literally felt like I was going to die for about 5 days). I promised myself I would never get the vaccine again, and 17 years later I have not had the flu. Well there is one exception to that: last week end I got the rumblings of a stomach flu and started to have very loose bowels. I took some homeopathic "oscillococcinun" and have felt fine. I also stay away from pharmaceuticals. I am 55 years old and do not take any over the counter or prescription drugs. I am amazed at people 15-20 years younger than me who are taking drugs for high cholesteral, acid reflex and arthritis. Most of these people are overweight and as Randy states, eat fast-food dog shit 3 times a day....
To Annabolic: There is real science and there is junk science and I try to sort out the differences. Pharma has a sordid track record, as Randy suggests, of hyping specific fraudulent studies that they claim are scientific to push their drugs (think Viox). And yes our ancestors ate cleaner (pesticide free) and healthy whole foods. They did not have a population with 66% of the people overweight or obese. Many died young because little was known about preventative hygiene such as the importance of treating sewage water and washing your hands. They knew nothing about micro organisms, e-coli or germ theory. The bubonic plague killed millions in the Middle Ages because they knew nothing about the rats who carried parasitic fleas that carried the diseases. Many women died from childbirth and many children did not make it to adulthood. Many others died from dangerous working conditions on the job. Many people died from ignorance or from circumstances they had little to no control over.
People today die from heart attacks, cancer and diabetes. This is not due to ignorance. This is due to lifestyle choices for the most part. The research is out there and we know how to lower our risks to these diseases. These are diseases that are often caused by smoking cigs, eating high fat and sugary diets, sedentary lifestyles, and alcohol/drug abuse. The Big Pharm companies make multi billions of dollars off of people who are hooked on the prescription drugs to keep them alive. One of the top 5 causes of death in our country is overuse or misuse of prescription drugs. Big Pharm would loose billions of dollars if people simply started eating healthier diets and exercised more. Pharma does not make money off of healthy people. That is a statistical fact.
It is one thing to defend science--a rational and experimental approach to discovery of how the world works, but it is another thing to defend Big Pharma in their deceitful and "junk" science. There is no doubt helpful medicines can and do save lives. Randy stated that in his article. (Polio vaccine and small pox). But the need for this tremendous push to over-medicate our population (and feed drugs to our food source--cows, pigs, chickens) with anti-biotics, anit-psychotics, anti-depressives, ADHD drugs, statin drugs, viagra, acid-reflux, high cholesterol, insomnia disorders, and the list goes on and on....deserves bold questioning and critical thinking. Also, keep in mind how much of Pharma and Big Ag are now over medicating our children. This ranges from all the junk found in junk food to all the meds given to children to control their behaviors and their "lack" of attention. There is clear, scientific research that shows children who spend less time outside have much greater attention problems than children who play outside for an hour a day. Yet Pharma pushes drugs for children who have attention problems and we have really no research to show us how drugs are affecting children long term. It really is a distortion of great magnitude.
BTW: It has nothing to do with conspiracy. It has to do with humongous profits made by the Pharm industries. If you believe that people are driven by the desire for money is a "conspiracy" then you know nothing about history and human beings. "Conspiracy" is a meaningless and over used word to label someone who is in disagreement. One man's "conspiracy' is another man's use of critical thinking skills. Please understand the difference.
Re: “Serraglio”
Great article! I fully agree.
I'm 76 years old and have never had a flu shot, and I do not take ANY prescription drugs. I refuse to yield to the media hype and the pressure and fear mongering from the medical establishment.
As you say, there are a few immunizations that have been very beneficial, but shots and prescription drugs are, for the most part, profit centers from Big Pharma, not a health benefit for the general public.
Thomas Greco
Re: “Serraglio”
Media hype is very different from actual science, and the science is firmly on the side of vaccination as one of the greatest public-health achievements in history. Glad to see you giving props to the polio vaccine, however much you'd like to misrepresent it as a brew of "nasty chemicals." You get a much bigger dose of nastiness when a dog licks your face, compared to the purified and sterile ingredients of a vaccine, but I guess it's up to you to choose which chemicals to villainize and which to overlook as somehow not having a molecular structure, however arbitrary this distinction might be.
Also, vaccines are getting more and more pure. Lots of them aren't even made with "deadly viruses," such as the vaccines for HPV and hepatitis B, which are made with yeast-produced viral proteins that stimulate an immune response without containing one iota of viral DNA. And, BTW, the vaccines that have been made with "deadly viruses" were made with either inactivated viruses or weakened viruses, i.e., they weren't deadly. To act like scientists were just stuffing wild-type polio-viruses into vials of vaccines, willy-nilly, is rather hyperbolic.
And I love it when people talk about how much they "know [their] own body," when these are the folk who have the absolute least amount of knowledge about the amazing innerworkings of their incredible bodies. Instead they reduce the human body down to something simplistic and boring, completely devoid of the awe a human body inspires. If you'd take a few months to scratch the surface of basic biology, especially immunology and infectious disease, you would be absolutely blown away by the beautiful, intricate systems we have evolved, which holistically work together in concert, keeping us alive and conscious and interacting with the world. Sure, we know our experience as embodied organisms, but we have no clue what's going on in our individual bodies at any given time at a cellular level.
As to the "clean, nutritious diet, [and] sensible lifestyle," supplemented by allegedly "effective traditional remedies" -- you know that's how the majority of our forebears lived, right? And, for the most part, they died of infectious diseases. Everyone knows we shouldn't be shotgunning Twinkies, and I hope we all know that a healthy lifestyle is not mutually exclusive with an appreciation of modern medicine. No need to denigrate pro-science, pro-medicine folk as people who are too lazy or unvirtuous to adhere to this "clean ... lifestyle" of which you speak. Heck, with the exception of the alternatives to medicine, which I eschew, that describes me pretty well.
People who swear up and down that there is some "Big Pharma conspiracy" when Occam's razor simply tells us that vaccination is a gain for public health ... Well, there's no reasoning with conspiracy theorists. The very nature of their unfalsifiable theories makes that impossible. Reasonable people can disagree on mandating vaccination and other such issues, but to deny the basic science, as an entity separate from laws and social mores, is just ignorance.
Vaccines? Not big money-makers for the pharmaceutical industry. Yes, even the annual flu shot. This isn't some cholesterol med you're taking every day for your whole life. And by the way, researchers are working on a "universal" vaccine that will do away with the annual shots.
P.S. Rush Limbaugh called, he wants his asinine portmanteau back. HAR!
Re: “Serraglio”
You forgot to mention the bumbling fools who set off their OWN car alarm getting in or out of it and them fumble around attempting to get control of it. We are not staring at you out of concern for your car, dufus.
It's routine for the alarm installers to ask the customer if they want the the hazard lights to flash or if they want the horn to honk when set on and off. As that great actor Fat Bastard once said, "people like the smell of their own brand". I'm quite sure their horn is not the only rude noise these people choose to share in public.
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Or my favorites (not) is when the National Guard is doing maneuvers on the south side and car alarms are going off everywhere.
I don't know statistically what the deterrent effect is for car alarms. but when I slam my door at the supermarket and an alarm goes off in the next parking space, it doesn't seem to attract anything except looks of disgust for the noise.
I once had a friend who had an expensive aftermarket alarm system installed in his new car.
A few months later he came out to find the car sitting on its hubs. The thieves only took the wheels and tires and the car alarm!
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If Mr. Serraglio left town we would be a little closer to the vision he has. Bye-Bye!
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Charles Chris, the ex Governor of Fl, said on TV last night, that Republicans wanted him to suppress the votes in the 2008 election. They were to target the black votes. Chris said NO. That is why the Republican Party kicked him out after Obama won in 2008. So Gov. Scott of Fl, went along with suppressing the votes, creating long voting lines. His mission was to stop Obama from winning. That is a known fact spoke by Republicans. Suppress the votes.
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It's a sad time in this USA, not being able to vote. We are back in the 1950/1960 when they could suppress voting. now they cannot. And to think our US Supreme Court may allow the Southern states to freely suppress votes again. We, the people, must stand up to our law makers and demand new Federal Laws be created. Our democracy depends on freedom to vote, but Republicans don't want us to be free. They want to control us in every aspect of our lives.
The serious issue is that Republicans are controlling more and more of the states. So our Federal Government must protect the people, because the states won't.
Re: “Serraglio”
IF the yellow card was addressed to you personally and not to your 'household' - as the yellow cards at my house were addressed - you are correct. If you were trying to pass off a yellow card addressed to 'household' the poll workers were right to ask for further identification. AND they should have required you to vote provisionally if you refused to supply an additional proper id (utility bill in your name, auto insurance card in your name, etc). By the way, almost all yellow cards are addressed to 'household' if there is more than one voter at the address. Response?
Re: “Serraglio”
The worker at my polling place when presented with my voter registration and the yellow card that was mailed to me asked me if I had an ID ID. Every single time I've voted since the passage of the voter ID law in AZ I've had to explain to a poll worker that my registration card and the post card meet the legal requirements of identification. Here's what's so galling about this. What I'm doing, presenting two forms of identification is actually much more secure than presenting a photo ID. Multi factor identification is inhherently more secure than single factor. Ever wonder why your ATM card pin is only 4 digits? Using that card is multi factor identification, you have to have the card and the pin. Why we even bother with the photo ID thing is beyond me anyhow. All voter fraud that occurs is with mail in and absentee ballots.
Re: “Serraglio”
I live in Santa Cruz County and worked as a poll worker. Each precinct had several laminated instructions concerning the three levels of IDs required. The purpose is to ensure that a person who wants to vote is on the "roster" of voters for that precinct and has an ID that shows a residence in the precinct. Living in the precinct is critical because there are different ballots based on your address. For example, you can only vote for a Nogales City Council member if you live inside the city limits or for school board members if you live in that School District.
There are three lists for IDs, a fairly short "A list of picture IDs such as a driver's license, with your current address (sometimes they go to DMV and get a corrected one before the polls close). The "B" list is for those with a picture ID but one without your address (such as a military ID card or passport) so something else that shows your name and address (utility bill, etc.) will also be required. The "C" list is for IDs that show name and address without a picture, and two are required, such as a utility bill and your voter ID card (has no picture).
Yes, Randy, a picture ID is NOT required, as the rules are clear for the "C" list IDs. We have at least 25 copies of the kinds of IDs for A, B, and C lists, in English and Spanish, but almost all had the right kind(s) of ID. Those without, were provided conditional ballots (which require verification within 5 days, usually, of the election) or provisional ballots when the address was wrong on an ID, etc. ALL who wanted to vote, were allowed to vote. We never turn them away because anyone can use a provisional ballot; however, when one shows up at the wrong precinct, we send them to the proper one, so they can use the correct ballot for there current address.
From this poll workers view, understanding the A, B, and Cs of IDs is a part of our required training in Santa Cruz County for all poll workers. Again, we never turn voters away, everyone votes who lives in the precinct. And, I've been doing this since Arizona started requiring IDs, without any problems. Both training and understanding the law how poll workers will NOT disenfranchise voters.
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Re: “Serraglio”
Charles, you need to become a columnist. There are actualy a few of us out here who are interested in truth and facts regarding immigration. But you're right - nice people don't talk about these things, nor do they win elections.