Arizona-Style Immigration Law in Texas? No Thanks.

The Nazis also asked a certain group of people for their papers. Okay, that's an exaggeration, as we obviously don't have now, or hopefully ever, Nazi status. But I'm trying to make a point about what can happen when you stop looking at people as people. I'm really surprised at how many Americans have the stance of, "they're illegal- they deserve what they get."

Frankly, I find this whole fear-mongering portrait being painted of the welfare-living, rapist, criminal immigrant to be disturbing. It dehumanizes them, and history has shown that a dehumanized population is a vulnerable one. The persecution of the Jews in Germany and Southern blacks in the Jim Crow era and before (let's not forget, they were called criminals and rapists too), among so many others, reminds us that hatred of a group, even when coupled with a broad public support and a moral high ground attitude, generally doesn't put you on the right side of history.

But they’re taking our jobs, and we’re in a recession, right? According to this story from The Atlantic, when Georgia passed similar immigration laws last year, they had over 11,000 empty farm worker positions available. I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of the fruit rotting on the vine there. And FactCheck.org found that "economists say immigration, legal or illegal, doesn't hurt American workers."

What about "Nike or Microsoft or General Motors or Ford or Boeing or Coca-Cola or Kellogg’s profiting from non-American labor?" I'm quoting The Family Guy, but he's got a point. Why don't more politicians go after the CEO's of these companies, who are outsourcing jobs Americans actually do want to do? I suspect it is because they are not as easy targets as illegal immigrants. They have more than us and not less. They are higher on the totem pole than us, and we all know that, uh, crud flows downstream. I'm just saying that maybe our anger is a bit misplaced.

In order to understand this legislation, we need to know who will be benefiting from it. No, I'm not talking about all the welfare money illegal immigrants are draining from our system; I'm talking about the billions of our tax dollars prison corporations have to gain from filling up their detention centers. Here is a youtube video about this system. It cites a story that NPR broke in 2010: that members of the Corrections Corporation of America and what is basically their lobby group, ALEC, were present with Sen Russell Pearce at the drafting of Arizona law SB 1070, and ALEC actually designed the model legislation for AZ and other states (This is so creepy, and unfortunately ALEC is designing a lot of other bills that get passed into state laws)

So, no, I'm not in favor of an Arizona-style law for Texas.

Texas Should Reduce the Budget Shortfall by Shopping at Costco

Here's how I would balance the budget:

1) Texas spends about $354 million on textbooks for public schools every year. While it is important to have up to date information in children's textbooks, I think the annual new editions many publishers print is a racket. Don't get me wrong, I think education should be one of our top priorities as far as tax $ go, but we should be smart about where we spend them. My guess is that legislators don't force publishers to be more selective in choosing new editions because a) it looks like they are cutting education spending and b) there is a good sized textbook lobby that is giving them money, but it looks like some California State Senators are trying to cut costs on textbook spending anyway. (I won't even go into what I think of the Texas Board of Education, who want this dum dum in charge of educating our children)

2) Why do we have a natural gas tax break, again? Effectively to increase corporate profits for the companies running the wells, according to this report by the Legislative Budget Board. Whether you believe reports funded by the fracking industry or the EPA, there seems to be enough evidence linking fracking, an increasingly popular method of extracting natural gas, with groundwater contamination to give us pause when considering this industry, let alone not taxing it. In fact, it could very well lead to increased tax expenditures in healthcare and environmental cleanup down the road. In this way, taxpayers would get to pay for the corporate profits twice.

3) Oh, right, I forgot what I would do first: legalize marijuana. I know this is some kind of moral issue for many people, but I'm pretty sure that anyone who's ever tried it can tell you it's no more harmful than alcohol (there are plenty of studies on this- here's an article with a few). (you can disagree with alcohol abuse and still want alcohol to be legal)This single piece of legislation would work to balance the budget on two fronts. It would increase tax revenue, sin tax revenue specifically, which gives the most bang for your buck. It would also cut down on the $3.3 billion we spend on prisons every year. As an added bonus, legalizing marijuana would cut into the $25 to $50 billion a year operating budget of the drug cartels, which, I don't know, might limit their power, thereby limiting their ability to deter investors and tourists, while generally making life a hell for Mexican citizens. With an economy not based on fear and torture, Mexico might become a place less people would want to leave, and that would cut into the amount of $$ taxpayers are spending on detention centers. I don't know, though, between the private prison industry and the drug cartels, aloooooot of money would be lost if we legalized marijuana, so, fingers crossed!

4) Speaking of sin taxes, while I disagree with them on principle for being regressive and discriminatory, I do believe that fast food chains and soda and junk food manufacturers could cough up some of their gigantic profits to pay for the diseases their products cause. Maybe we could impose a tax based on the amount of advertising $$ a company spends. That would target the predatory practices of the company instead of their consumers, though the effect might be the same (higher prices). Either way, I wouldn't use this "fat tax" to increase state revenue directly; I would put it in a fund for healthy school lunches and programs to fight obesity and the diseases it causes. This would open up some of our healthcare tax money to be spent in other ways.

Who knew I had so much to say about the state budget? Well I do love a bargain!