I gotta ask. What do you, or people in general think of as "skilled labor" and "white collar" jobs?

IMO, skilled labor: Electrician, Plumber, Framer, Cook, Programmer, Automotive Technician.

White collar: Any middle management position on up.

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That covers it for me. In the case of the ones in regards to illegals, I am for the most part refering to the construction trade jobs such as carpenter, plumber, masons and bricklayers and even electricians. Illegals are doing all those jobs here in Texas. Actual citizens still doing those jobs are seeing a major downward pressure on wages.

Yer kidding, and it's pretty obvious? How do they get licensed?

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

One guy with a masters license fronts for a hundred of them. He's getting rich just signing his name. Everybody in authority looks the other way. Thats how everything is done here. It is starting to have a mjor effect. For example, the official population of Houston city proper is 1.5 million people. I bet if you counted all the illegals, there's probably closer to 3 million people living there. That's an enormous market, and enough of them can vote to make them a powerful voting block. It distorts the cost of all city and county services as well, like schools and county hospitals. Its even worse in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area. The city of Ft. Worth has become Mexico City North - its run down neighborhoods provide housing for probably a million illegals who labor in the citizen-suburbs of Dallas, Arlington, Irving, etc.

Yer kidding, and it's pretty obvious? How do they get licensed?

The people doing the actual plumbing, wiring etc. don't have to be licensed only the contactor. I have gone out to a huge subdivision that my freind is doing the sidewalks for. None of the workers are salaried employees.

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I think that varies by state. I know when I did construction work years ago, a person who actually tapped into potable water had to have at least a journeyman's license, and the inspectors would actually come out to check. A tag with the journeymans' license number had to be afixed to it when it was finished. There were other tasks with those requirements too. Now you rarely see the guys. The master plumber just passes out signed tags to his illegals. I know in the northeastern states they still poilice the crap out of that stuff to keep the illegals out.

What we'll find is a steadily improving economy. Improving from the RAPID DOWNTURN that started BEFORE Bush took office. The economy was in full swing when Clinton took over and stayed strong on its own momentum for a while, but the social programs and increased taxes to pay for them took it's toll and it came crashing down.

The typical liberal socialists whose mantra is "Bush out at all costs" seem to have it in their heads that the gov can just "print more money" and we'd ALL be rich. No kidding, I actually had someone tell me this! They also argued that we incarcerate more of our population than any other county, then proceeded to say Saudi Arabia has the lowest. Thank goodness I could point out that in Saudi, you rob/rape/steal from someone only once - then chop, chop square. They just didn't get it.

The economy still sucks. The loss of the trade towers took more than war funds from us, the loss in business was in the trillions. I'm surprised we haven't seen another great depression to tell the truth.

Of course...., there's still time....

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"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". Lewis Carrol

There was not a single major social prgram passed during the Clinton years. In fact, the largest expansion of social prgrams since the 1970s was the perscription drug bill. which the Republican House and Senate passed and the President just signed. It's a freakin boondoggle that is now projected to have unestimated cost overruns in the hundreds of billions, so spare me the standard bad ole liberals soap box speech. They haven't been a factor in government expeditures since 1992, 12 yrs ago.
Spending and tax policy originates in the House, which has been repub majority since then, without interruption.

Clinton also ran the largest budget surpluses in history, but I don't give him credit for that. I personally credit the good economy during the Clinton years to gridlock government, which kept both the Repubs and Demos from screwing up the economy. The repubs are currently screwing it up royally by passing out tax cuts financed by deficits because they don't havethe political balls to cut spending. It doesn't matter whose in power, all our politicians love pork. They just hand it out to different constituencies, thats all. When one party gains too much power, they hand out to much pork, whether its Great Society Democrats handing it out to lazy welfare cheats or Rebublicans handing it out to Halliburton, its the same ****.

shoot, I didn't want to get all political here. But i must agree with KV.

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RedMeat cartoon

Well for the first time ever I also agree with Kirk - any democrat that is primarily interested in domestic social programs/increased government spending that does not vote for George Bush is a hypocrit.

The republican spending spree over the last 4 years has me longing for the divided government clinton years.

Sheesh..., where have you been living? Start with the HUD fiasco and work through SS fund opening. We can go from there.

"President Bill Clinton last night proposed the biggest tax increase in American history as part of what he claimed is a balanced $493 billion deficit reduction package." Daniel J. Mitchell, Ph.D.- February 18, 1993


Bulls**t. What Clintoon did was the same thing he did in his AR real estate scams. "Accounting tricks 101"

Increase the budget ceiling and "voila", you're now "within budget" again.

Clintoon era food for thought:

"A Joint Economic Committee report found that every dollar of higher taxes since 1947 has resulted in $1.59 of higher spending. This statistical survey is supported by recent history. Tax increases in 1982, 1984, 1987, and 1990 all were enacted for the alleged purpose of deficit reduction. In every case, however, the deficit rose the following year because lawmakers could not resist the temptation to spend the expected new revenues. " (these during both Dem and Repub admins, but Dem controlled congress, BTW, so the fault is with both AFAIC)

The problem with "tax and spend"

"All of the tax increases (specifically of the Clintoon era), including the increases in marginal income tax rates, are assumed to have no impact on the behavior of taxpayers. In the real world, however, individuals and businesses already have been adjusting their behavior to protect their earnings and lighten the expected burden of higher taxes"


OK, this I can get behind. But what can we do about it besides complain? Not saying there ISN'T something, we just need to come up with a way to get new blood (who are NORMAL people; work for a living, family, NOT rich, etc.) involved in the legislative process. Either that, or maybe ULTRA-RICH so that "buying them off with pork" would be impossible? Then again, rich people always want more no matter what they have, so that's probably not an option either. BTW, in this context, it's "who's."


OK, lets also include Dems there too, because they, as a majority were involved in the decision. Besides, I understand what you're saying and agree, but Haliburton is a bad example here. That was one of the RIGHT things to do in this case. Having seen the awesome destruction that was caused to the enviro in '91 when the POS's lit up wells from Al Basrah up to Baghdad. Oil well fires do not go into the dark night easily. They burned and spewed black for months. Calling in the most experienced company in the world to deal with what we fully expected again was the right call.

The "other" option, was to put up the well work for bid. Let's see..., that's 90 days for bidders on the fast-track. Then acceptance of the lowest bidder (do ya think the lowest bidder woulda' known a THING about oil well fires in Iraq), then deployment, all the while, our environment is loaded with 90-120 days worth of raw oil fire pollution.

Not many people I know who've worked contract DIDN'T work for Halliburton at one time. The largest and most experienced in the oil biz (not that I'm a "Halliburton" lackey - they f**ked me ROYALLY on taxes that I'm still trying to get squared away - they also know accounting tricks 101!). That's why the fires, ALL of them, (they didn't light a lot of the wells this time anyway, thanks to the SF units/EOD guys who got on the wells and de-activated the various items) were out in days.

But..., point well taken. The repubs seem to give more rev's to the biz in this country than to social programs that perpetuate leeches.

Let's see though...., hmmm...., give incentive to biz, biz hires more workers and expands, more $'s go down the line into the economy???? That's a BAD thing??????

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1984 300D Turbo - 4-speed manual conversion, mid-level resto

1985 300SD Auto - Runner.


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"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there". Lewis Carrol

Those are "social programs"? Come on, lets at least be intellectually honest!

Spending by the Republican Congress has been simply out of control. Period. They hand out social programs, they hand highway pork, they hand out corporate welfare, they hand out individual tax cuts, you name it, they hand it out if it means a vote. They show not even an inclination to control spending, no proposals, no plans, no sunset laws, nothing, that might endanger a vote they already have. Myself, I tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I own a small business and used to appreciate the Republican's sense of fiscaol responsibility. Never in a million years did I think the reason I would end up voting for a Democrat would be to restore fiscal responsibility to the Congresss.

It depends on the business. When we had some sense of national direction, like when the space program was in full swing, for instance. But now there is no accountability on who is getting what. Its no-bid contracts at Halliburton
and shady deals at Boeing. The whole relationship between business and government currently stinks like bad fish.

Right on KV.

Did you guys not read the news last week with the appropriation of funds from 9/11 to rebuild NYC? Most money were directed to locations outside of Ground Zero, one pot even went to a developer to build luxury condo in Brooklyn. Where is the directions? This administration is a joke.

Want more? How about the Homeland Security funds that were promised to the local governments? Not a penny so far!! Don't believe me? Call the local police and EMS and ask if they receive any funding to prepare for a bio-chemical attacks. The answer may surprise you.

This is the same Government that promised a safer nation for all to live. Go drink that cool-aide, by the pitcher.

Economy is getting better? Maybe for a small number of people. No matter how bad the situation is, even during the Depression of the '20s. Some fat cats always benefit from others miseries. That is life.

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I swear thats what all of us should vote for. If the system of checks and balances is not working, then we the voters need to put in our own. I also think a lot of the problem lies in who now has control of the Republican party. The switch from fiscal responsibilities based leadership to hot button social issues leadership seems to have put men in charge of the party who are more motivated by politics than principle to the point of detriment to the country, and the reason is obvious - you need large super majorities to cause major social change in this country, so these guys are more interested in doing whatever they can to get a vote so they can outlaw abortion, force kids to pray in school, etc.
Myself, I'd be a lot more open to voting for them if it looked more like guys like McCain, Hagel and Lugar were in charge instead of Delay and the rest of the right wing ayatollahs.

My ideal government would be a fiscally conservative House, a moderate Senate and a democratic President. The president would be unable to pass any insane social programs, while being able to veto any right-wing social engineering by the House, while the Senate would fulfill its role as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, a sagious council meant to put the brakes on the other two. I think we had this under Clinton, and it worked.

The ultimate solution is to convene a Constitutional Convention, which is provided for in the Constitution, but never done before, and reform our legislative bodies to follow the British model and create proportional, rather than winner take all districts. The geographically based governing model was correct when we were a vast relatively unpopulated land. It no longer works, and it allows special interests to control us, be they Rebublican or Democrat. For example, the small business man in New York City, has no representation in Congress at all, or in the other extreme, the poor minorities of Houston have no represention in Tom Delay's district here in Houston. We need a democracy where the majority rules, but the voice of the opposition is present and heard. In this country, we are teetering on the brink of civil war every four years because the winner is getting it all.
No matter what the political party, the other side is left voiceless and angry, its only weapon public sniping and impeachment politics. We have simply outgrown some aspects of our government.