Say...I would Like To Visit Saychelles!

I really enjoy doing a bit of research on places that my Cluster Map shows I receive views from. The current Island is Saychelles. It is a beautiful island country that I am know placing on my list of places I would like to visit, but probably never will! Here is a link to some info....
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.newspapers24.com/images/category/seychelles.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.newspapers24.com/seychelles-newspapers/&usg=__62jB-GtUX0NJM9nPOh7IhGvh3rU=&h=226&w=300&sz=21&hl=en&start=37&um=1&tbnid=fM7iriEdrygRVM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSeychelles%2B(SC)%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20%26um%3D1

Seychelles is an archipelago which lies in the western part of the Indian Ocean, and spreads over an Exclusive Economy Zone of around 1.3 million Square kilometers.

Lying 1593 km East of Kenya, 2813 km South West of India and 925 km North East of Madagascar makes this archipelago strategically located. It consists of 115 islands, of which 76 are coralline and the remaining are granitic. The main part of the archipelago is situated between 4 and 5 degrees South of the equator at a longitude between 55 and 56 degrees east, allowing it to enjoy a favorable climate. But Seychelles is also lucky to be situated in a zone free from cyclones. All the main islands are granitic and Mahe is the principal island (153 skm with 80% of the total population). The estimated population is 80,000 in 1998.The coralline islands are low averaging 1.5 meters above sea level and seldom exceed 9 to 15 meters in height Supplies of fresh water are scarce and settlements are small with rarely more than a hundred people. Many of these islands serve as rookeries for large bird population.In contrast the granitic islands rise from the sea to altitudes of 600 to 1000m. The topography is rugged with outcrops ofhuge boulders. Fresh water is provided by surface streams. Most islands are covered in luxuriant and verdant vegetation. White sandy beaches surrounding the islands are natural features of the Seychelles archipelago.

A Republican In Harlem

Of course, this is a story that would not be told by many in the media. I hope he spreads the truth to all that will listen that depending on Uncle Sam for all of ones needs is wrong, and relying on family and self is what is right. Below is a short interview and his homepage.
http://brandonbrice.com/default.aspx
http://hiphoprepublican.com/politics/outreach/2009/06/17/a-republican-in-harlem-brandon-brice-showing-the-community-side-of-republicanism-2/

Brandon Brice is a community organizer and an active Republican in Harlem. Republicans working in the black community is not generally a normal concept. Self-empowerment, financial success and small government are words usually associated with the Republican Party, but not community involvement. Brandon, however, shows that Republicanism and community work are not mutual exclusive but can co-exist.
Why are you in Harlem? You have a Bachelor’s degree from Howard University in Business, worked for the United Nations as well as corporate America, so why drop the larger salary to work in the community?
I’ve lived in Harlem for five years now and have seen a lot. The increasing numbers of single mothers, black folks losing their homes and livelihoods and seniors being displaced at rapid rates across uptown- it just isn’t right. I decided that I wanted to help my neighbors because Harlem is my community.
Do you think your community efforts fit within Republican values?
Yes! Getting people to understand how taxes, affordable health care, housing and small business opportunities affects them is being Republican. Educating people about certain opportunities and policies helps them to make informed decisions. This allows them to create the life they want for themselves.
What is one of your successes since working in Harlem?
I helped get a lot of kids get into college this year- some got into top schools including the Ivy League. For four years I have been in mentoring program that helps young black and Latino males get into college. I knew I had to commit myself to this program when I realized kids from the South Bronx and Harlem were not being asked questions like, ” what do you want to do with your life?” Or ,”what college do you want to go?” That to me was just unacceptable. If you want to keep kids out of jail, get them educated. Get them into college.
Where did you go to college?
Howard, and it was a great experience. It is a liberal school, so it was a good training ground for me to defend my ideas as a Republican.
So you were a Republican before college? Did you come from an affluent family?
I am a son of a single mother. And I became Republican while going to Howard. In high school, a teacher of mine told me to always keep an open mind about politics and to take a look at the history of the Republican Party. He was a Republican. I wasn’t sure about the Republican Party until my junior year at Howard, when I interned for J. Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House and Ken Melman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. After working with these leaders and looking at the history of the GOP, I am convinced of two things- that Republican policies can work and that Republican ideas are badly marketed.
What do you think are areas of development for the GOP?
We got to talk about the issues that matter to people. We can’t talk about stem cell research to people who got no jobs. We’ve got to address the issues by region and by need.
How can you be a black Republican in an Obama America? How can you tell other African Americans to consider any other party than the Democratic Party without feeling like a sell-out?
I’m a Republican, but I am a black man first. So deciding to become a Republican is based on who I am and what ideas can work best in the black community.
Brandon Brice is a graduate of Howard University and is a former fellow of the New Jersey Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. As a long time member of Republicans for Black Empowerment, Brandon is an active contributor to HipHopRepublicans.com. Brandon Brice has worked as a policy intern for the former House Speaker Honorable J. Dennis Hastert and has served as a fellow at the United Nations. He has been featured on C-SPAN’s Road to the White House, BET’s What’s At Stake and Hot97 with Lisa Evers. Brandon is a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc, and attends the Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church.

No Vacancy

At what point will American citizens realize that we will not be able to accept any more immigrants, either legal or illegal. When will we realize that the people we do let in must have a skill or a profession other than "laborer." Most illegal alien coming to the states are grunt workers. Not doctors, scientist, or professors.
One may ask, "who will do the jobs that others will not?" Easy, cut off unemployment payments and force those who are abusing this system to work. When a person is hungry enough, they will work for food.
We have allowed to many unskilled people into this country for too long. It has been a drain on social services and law enforcement. So comrade and chump and all the other politicos can speak all they want about their beloved "immigration reform," but until we fix the "free lunch" mentality that has infected so many, we will continue to slide into the sludge status of a third world nation. Below is some good reading on the topic of immigration.

http://www.answers.com/topic/immigration-act-of-1965
Although technically just a group of amendments to the existing Immigration and Nationality Act, the Immigration Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, in actuality fundamentally reshaped American Immigration for the remainder of the twentieth century and beyond. It abolished the national origins system set up in the Immigration Act of 1924 and modified by the Immigration Act of 1952. While seeming to maintain the principle of numerical restriction, it so increased the categories of persons who could enter "without numerical limitation" as to make its putative numerical caps—170,000 annually for the Eastern Hemisphere with a maximum of 20,000 per nation plus 120,000 annually for the Western Hemisphere with no national limitations—virtually meaningless within a few years. Its expansion and modification of the existing preference systems is shown in the Sidebar. Although little noticed at the time and virtually ignored in most general histories of the period, it can be seen as one of three major legislative accomplishments of 1965, the high-water mark of late-twentieth-century liberalism, along with the Voting Rights Act and the establishment of the Medicare and Medicaid system.
The final passage of the 1965 act was somewhat anticlimactic. The struggle to scrap the 1924 national origins formula had been going on in earnest since the end of World War II. Liberal immigration policy goals were established by President Harry S. Truman's Commission on Immigration and Naturalization in its 1953 report, Whom We Shall Welcome. That report was highly critical of the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, which was passed over Truman's veto. The reforms it urged and all attempts at systemic change were frustrated in Congress, although a number of statutes and executive branch actions added groups of immigrants, largely refugees, to the admissible mix.
The personnel changes in Congress accompanying President Lyndon Johnson's sweeping 1964 victory and the gradual diminution of religious, ethnic, and even racial prejudices in the nation at large made immigration reform an idea whose time had come. To be sure, a few restrictionist die-hards, such as Senator Sam Ervin (Democrat from North Carolina), tried to maintain the status quo. Ervin insisted that the McCarran-Walter Act was not discriminatory but was instead "like a mirror reflecting the United States, allowing the admission of immigrants according to a national and uniform mathematical formula recognizing the obvious and natural fact that those immigrants can best be assimilated into our society who have relatives, friends, or others of similar background already here." What Ervin never admitted was that the "mirror" was badly distorted, like those at amusement parks, and reflected not the population of the 1960s but that recorded in the 1920 census. But most in Congress simply acquiesced. The final passage of the bill in the Senate was by voice vote, while in the House it was approved overwhelmingly, 326 to 69.
Many scholars have characterized the 1965 act as a prime example of "unintended consequences," and it is clear that even its most influential advocate, President Johnson, seems not to have understood what its effects would be. In the signing ceremony staged on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, Johnson remarked: "This bill that we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to our wealth or our power." The president was not indulging in un-characteristic understatement. He and his advisers saw the 1965 act as redressing injuries done in 1924 and 1952, what he called the wrong done to those "from southern and eastern Europe."
In practice the law has worked quite differently from the ways in which any of its sponsors expected. Looking backward and expecting the future to resemble the past, they ignored the evidence of data available to them. As Table 1 shows, growing numbers of Latin Americans and Asians had been coming to the United States since World War II, and once such persons had permanent resident status, a whole cohort of relatives became eligible to enter the country as second preference immigrants. And as soon as these immigrants became U.S. citizens, as unprecedented numbers of them did in the minimum five-year waiting period, more persons became eligible as first, fourth, and fifth preference immigrants, while others could enter exempt from numerical preference. After the 1965 act went into effect, this kind of chain migration, in which related immigrants follow one another as links in a chain, accounted for a preponderance of all nonrefugee migration.
Perhaps the most misleading aspect of the law involves the presumed twenty thousand cap on entries from any one nation. That cap, which never affected Western Hemisphere nations, applies only to those entering from the Eastern Hemisphere who are subject to "numerical limitation." In 1985, for example, forty-eight thousand Filipinos and thirty-five thousand Koreans entered legally, to list only the two largest national groups from the Eastern Hemisphere entering in that year. The twenty thousand cap has been chimerical.
If scholars ignored or downplayed the 1965 law for a long time, by the 1980s, when immigration had become a major issue in American public life, many of the discussions, whether in blame or praise, overstated its influence. For example, a 1989 Rand study reported: "After a lull lasting more than 40 years, immigration to the United States began to increase considerably in the late 1960s after the passage of the 1965 Act." The two great changes that took place in American immigration in the second half of the twentieth century—the steady increase in the number of immigrants and the steady reduction of the once dominant share taken by European immigrants—were clearly in evidence before the enactment of the new law in October 1965, as One can only speculate whether or not, had Congress understood what the results of its actions would be, the 1965 act would have been passed in anything like the form that it finally assumed. Most of the few scholars who have addressed this question have answered it in the negative.

Bibliography
Barkan, Elliott R. "Whom Shall We Integrate? A Comparative Analysis of the Immigration and Naturalization Trends of Asians before and after the 1965 Immigration Act (1951–1978)." Journal of American Ethnic History 1, no. 3 (Fall 1983): 29–57. Documents naturalization as a factor in chain migration.
Bean, Frank D., Georges Vernez, and Charles B. Keely. Opening and Closing the Doors: Evaluating Immigration Reform and Control. Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1989. A social science study.
Gillon, Steven M. "That's Not What We Meant to Do": Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Norton, 2000. Chapter 4 deals with the 1965 Immigration Act.
Kennedy, Edward M. "The Immigration Act of 1965." Annals 367 (September 1966): 137–149. A contemporary account by a leading advocate of immigration reform.
Reimers, David M. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America. 2d ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. The best account of post–World War II immigration.

National Origins: Our New Immigration Formula (1924)The American Review of Reviews (No. LXX, No. 3) September 1924 George Wheeler Hinman, Jr.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1315840/posts?page=68

When the United States first undertook to curtail the flow of immigration, the problem of finding a reasonable formula upon which to base the fair distribution of quotas among the various nationalities affected immediately presented itself. The problem was a most troublesome one, complicated by political considerations at home and by diplomatic difficulties abroad.
Assuming the actual curtailment of immigration to be desirable, there still remained to be passed upon several important matters. Nationally speaking, the people of the United States were entitled to first consideration. Hence, it was essential that any basis of restriction should be one which would conserve their interests. There was, in addition, the desire to afford fair treatment to the peoples of other nations, hundreds of thousands of whom had left their home lands to begin their lives again in the New World. Those seeking asylum from political or religious persecution had traditionally found in the United States a haven of refuge.
Emergency Law of 1921
The first actual move to curtail immigration numerically was the emergency quota law of May 19, 1921, restricting the admission of aliens in any year to 3 per cent of the number of foreign-born persons of each nationality residing in the United States as shown by the census of 1910. In other words, there being approximately 1,401,900 persons of Italian birth resident in the United States according to the census of 1910, Italy was entitled to send 3 per cent of that figure, or 42,057 immigrants, to the United States each year.
It is difficult to justify this formula for restriction upon any basis save that of sheer expediency. There is no particular reason why the number of foreign-born of any one nationality should determine how many more that nation might send to Americas shores. The argument that, because so many had come in recent years, a proportionate number should be admitted in future years, is too far-fetched to be worthy of serious consideration. The history of American immigration is a story of successive waves from various sections of the Old World.
Early Predominance of Northern European Stocks
During the first two centuries and a half following the discovery of America, only 80,000 immigrants entered the area which is now part of the United States. At the close of these 250 years, these immigrants had grown by natural processes until the population of the area approximated 1,000,000 persons. Half a century later, the first census, that of 1790, showed the population of the United States to be almost 4,000,000, practically all of whom were descendants of the original 80,000. Excepting a small sprinkling of descendants of immigrants from France, Spain, Holland, and the Rhenish provinces of Germany, the population of 1790 was British and Irish.
The first American immigration law was enacted in 1820. No official record of immigration was kept by the national government prior to that date. From the best available sources, however, it has been estimated that approximately 300,000 immigrants entered the United States between 1783, the date of the Treaty with Great Britain acknowledging American independence, and 1820. Practically every one of the 300,000 came from the nations of northern and western Europe.
In all, there have been five great waves of immigration in American history. The number of immigrants entering the United States each year did not pass the 100,000 mark until 1842, when the total reached 104,565. The immigration wave then rose steadily until it reached its crest of 427,833 in 1854. This first wave was chiefly British in origin, although political disturbances in Germany drove a large number from that area of Europe to the United States. Almost all the immigrants came from the nations of northern and western Europe.
Rise of Southern and Eastern Europe as Immigration Factors
After 1854, the tide receded, but a second wave began sweeping in during the Civil War and rose to a crest of 459,803 in 1873. This wave, too, was mainly British and German, plus a touch of Scandinavian. For the fist time, moreover, there was a noticeable trace of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Numerically, they were negligible, crossing the 10,000 mark for the first time in 1871. The nations of northern and western Europe were still furnishing the great bulk of immigration.
The third wave began in 1880 and swept quickly to a high mark of 788,992 in 1882. Secondary crests in the same general movement were reached in 1888 and 1892. Although the immigrants of northern and western Europe still dominated, there was a most significant and insistent increase in the flow from the southern and eastern nations. In 1882, they were only 11 per cent of the total, in 1888, 26 per cent, and in 1892, 47 per cent. For the first time, Italy, Russia, Poland and Austria-Hungary were furnishing a considerable proportion of the annual immigration. The influx from Russia and Poland brought many immigrants of the Hebrew race.
Although the third wave definitely receded after 1892, the immigration from southern and eastern Europe continued to occupy its position of prominence. Finally, in 1896, with a percentage of 57 of the total immigration, it passed numerically the influx from the nations of northern and western Europe. From that time until the operation of the quota law of 1921, except for the World War years, the nations of southern and eastern Europe continued to furnish more than half, and in some years more than three-fourths, the total.
In the fourth immigration wave, with the record crest of 1,285,349 in 1907 and secondary crests in 1910 and 1914, the few immigrants from northern and western Europe were completely submerged in the flood from Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Of the record influx in 1907, 979,661, or more than three-fourths, came from the nations of southern and eastern Europe. For each succeeding year until the outbreak of the World War called a halt, the immigration from these nations exceeded two-thirds of the total. In 1914, it again crossed the three-fourths mark in a total immigration of 1,218,480, only a few thousand below the record figure of 1907. From all indications, only the declarations of war in August, 1914, prevented the year 1915 from setting a new record.
The World War checked the flow of immigration from Europe, which fell from above the million mark in 1914 to less than 25,000 in 1919, or only 18 per cent of the total for that year. The year 1920, however, started the fifth wave from Europe. The total for the year was 430,001, of which two-fifths came from southern and eastern Europe, one-fifth from northern and western Europe, and the remaining two-fifths principally from other countries of North and South America. The wave continued to rise; reaching 805,228 in 1921. Of this total, more than two-thirds came from southern and eastern Europe. Then the emergency quota law of May, 1921, called a halt.
Emergency Quota Worked Against Northern Nationalities
There was no denying that this emergency act operated in favor of those nationalities which of later years had furnished the bulk of American immigration. For fourteen years prior to the census of 1910, these later arrivals were bound to count heavily against the nations which had sent their immigrants to American shores in the earlier years. So it came about quite naturally that those nations in which had originated nearly four-fifths of the white population of the United States were assigned barely one-half of the total immigration quota.
General recognition was given the fact that the law of 1921 was only a makeshift measure designed to meet an emergency. There still remained unsolved the problem of working out a formula for the curtailment of immigration which would serve the interests of the American people and at the same time do justice to the peoples of other nations. In itself, the problem was sufficiently difficult, but this difficulty was greatly aggravated by national and racial controversies. The original sources of American immigration were the nations of northern and western Europe. The newer sources were the nations of southern and eastern Europe. This fact gave rise to the most involved disputes over the relative merits of races and nationalities. Physical, mental and moral characteristics were debated with some bitterness. Records of antiquity were ransacked by eager scholars to prove this or that doctrine of racial superiority or to disprove a doctrine advanced by somebody else. Much was written, and more was said; and but little of either had any real bearing upon the true issue involved in the search for a formula which would justly curtail American immigration.
Through all the storm of national and racial controversy, the search for an American immigration formula went painstakingly on. The crisis of 1921, with 5,000,000 unemployed in the United States and immigrants entering at the rate of almost 1,000,000 a year, crystallized the belief that the time had come to check the unlimited flow of aliens from abroad. The law of 1921, while it met the emergency, failed to provide a permanently satisfactory means for immigration control. There could be no justification for basing alien quotas on foreign born inhabitants of the United States and at the same time utterly ignoring the native-born. There was, too, a growing feeling that the law of 1921 admitted an excessive number of immigrants.
Recognizing Native-Born of Foreign Origin
All efforts were concentrated upon the task of reaching a solution which, while curtailing the flow of immigration, would at the same time recognize the claims of the native-born as well as those of the foreign-born residing within the United Sates. In other words, the purpose was to grant recognition to the descendants of those immigrants who had come to the United States in the earlier years and so no longer figured prominently in the compilations of the foreign-born.
The census of 1920 indicated that, of the white population of the United States, approximately 85 per cent had originated in northern and western Europe and 15 per cent in southern and eastern Europe. This was in marked contrast to the European immigration quotas of 1921, which, based upon the foreign-born as shown by the census of 1910, gave 55 per cent to northern and western and 45 per cent to southern and eastern Europe. In brief, if the origin of the native-born as well as of the foreign-born were to be considered, the quota of southern and eastern Europe would have to be divided by three, and that of northern and western Europe increased by nearly one-half. Any such change, so far as southern and eastern Europe was concerned, would be made more drastic as the total of all quotas was reduced. And yet, assuming that immigration should be curtailed on a basis of even-handed justice to all those who resided within the United States, it was hard to challenge the fairness of a principle which sought to recognize the rights of both the native and the foreign-born.
So the demand grew for the preparation of an immigration formula based upon the national origins of the American people as shown by the best available records, the census of 1920. There were numerous obstacles to the meeting of that demand. It would be no simple task to determine even with approximate accuracy the national origins of 95,000,000 persons, the white population of the United States. It was comparatively easy to estimate that approximately 85 per cent of that white population had come from the countries of northern and western Europe, but it was another matter to distribute that 85 per cent upon the face of the changing map of the Old World. And, as for the 15 per cent from southern and eastern Europe, the task was just that much more difficult.
Enemies of the principle assailed the idea of a national origins formula as hopelessly unworkable. It was unthinkable, they argued, that any calculator could distribute the quotas with any degree of accuracy. So strong was the opposition that many supporters of the national origins idea advocated the achievement of approximately the same general result by the building of quotas upon the basis of the foreign-born as shown by the census of 1890. This, of course, was a purely arbitrary method designed to restore the balance between the nations of northern and western Europe on the one hand and those of southern and eastern Europe on the other. Meantime, the opponents of the national origins idea were fighting bitterly to retain the census of 1910 as the basis of calculations.
A Basis Found in "National Origins"
The outcome of the struggle was a complete victory for both the national origins formula and the census of 1890, the latter as a stop-gap to control during the years prior to July 1, 1927 when the former becomes operative. During each of the years 1925, 1926, and 1927, quotas are to be assigned on the basis of 2 per cent of the foreign-born of the various nationalities as shown by the census of 1890. The total of these quotas will approximate 162,000, as against 358,000 under the emergency quota law of 1921. During those same three years, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, and the Secretary of Labor, jointly, are to work out a plan for admitting to the United States annually 150,000 immigrants with quotas distributed upon the basis of the national origins of the white inhabitants of the United States as shown by the census of 1920.
For example, approximately three-fifths of the white population of the United States originated in Great Britain and Ireland. Accordingly, the annual quota for Great Britain and Ireland for 1928 - the governmental fiscal and statistical year ends on June 30 of the calendar year - will approximate three-fifths of 150,000, or 90,000 immigrants. There is a saving clause under which no national quota for admissible immigrants may be less than 100. On the strict national origins basis, for instance, the Egyptian quota would be only three. The quota restriction does not apply to Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the independent nations of Central and South America. In accordance with the traditional spirit of Pan-Americanism, there is no restriction upon these, if they meet the general requirements. On the other hand, no quotas are given those nationalities ineligible to American citizenship.
The national origins formula works a complete change in the distribution of immigration quotas. Of the total white population of the United States in 1910, approximately 12,000,000 were of foreign birth. Under the quota law of 1921, immigrants were admitted in quotas distributed among the nations in accordance with the origins of these 12,000,000. The national origins formula, however, takes into account not only these foreign-born, but also the native-born; and the immigration quotas are distributed in accordance with the origins of all the 95,000,000 white residents of the United States. In a typical State on the Atlantic seaboard, for instance, 27 per cent of the population is of foreign birth. Under the law of 1921, the remaining 73 per cent, the native born, had no voice in determining who should be admitted to the United States, for quotas were apportioned solely on the basis of the 27 per cent minority. Under the national origins formula, the entire 100 per cent receive equal consideration within the total of authorized immigration.
Selection at the Source
In addition to establishing a new basis for immigration restriction, the Act of May, 1924, also provides for regulating admissions by a system of immigration visas administered by the American consular service abroad. The new system goes as far as national sovereignty will permit in selecting American immigration at the source. Before any immigrant sails for the United States, he receives from the local American consul an immigration visa, to obtain he must answer certain questions bearing upon his admissibility. Unless his national quota is unfilled and unless he appears otherwise qualified for admission to the United States, he is denied the visa. In past years, tens of thousands of persons have reached American ports only to be denied admission, usually for reasons that could have been ascertained in their native lands. The system of immigration visas operates to reject the inadmissible alien before he leaves his native land.
How the New Law Will Work
A few outstanding cases will suffice to show the drastic effect of the application of the national origins idea to American immigration. Under the emergency law of 1921, the Italian quota was 42,057. Under the national origins formula, it will approximate 5,800, less than one-seventh of the former quota, and during the three years under the census of 1890, it will be 3,845, less than one-tenth. Czechoslovakia drops from 14,357 under the law of 1921 to 3,073 under the census of 1890, and again to about 1,300 under the national origins formula. Russia was allowed 24,405 by the law of 1921. She will have only 2,248 each year under the census of 1890 and about 4,000 under the national origins formula. Poland falls from 30,979 to 5,982 under the census of 1890 and finally to approximately 4,500 on the basis of national origins.
The case of Great Britain and Ireland presents the other side of the picture. Their quota under the law of 1921 was 77,342. It is cut to 62,574 during each of the three years on the basis of the census of 1890, but the national origins formula is expected to raise above the 90,000 mark. When it is recalled that about 45,000,000 of the American people today are descendants of Revolutionary War stock, the reason for this increase is not difficult to understand.
Next to Great Britain and Ireland comes Germany. The German quota under the law of 1921 was 67,607. It drops to 51,227 under the census of 1890, and then is cut to about 22,000 by the national origins formula. Only the British-Irish and the German quotas will exceed the 6,000 mark under the national origins formula. Together, they will form about three-fourths of the 150,000 immigration allowance granted all quota nationalities. Under the law of 1921, they composed barely two-fifths of the 358,000 total.
A National Immigration Policy Outlined
Although the cases of individual nations are of interest, the real importance of the national origins formula lies in its significance as a definite phase in the development of an American immigration policy. The adoption of the formula represents the premise that the time has come for the United States to erect a barrier against the flow of immigration from foreign lands. The minor premise is that the barrier shall be one which, however high it is raised, will admit each year a miniature replica of the American people as they are today.
The significance of the major premise can hardly be overemphasized. True, the quota law of 1921 provided for the numerical restriction of alien admissions; but the act itself was purely a temporary expedient to meet a critical situation, and effective for only one year. During that year, attempts were made to draft substitute immigration legislation of a more or less temporary character, and, when these attempts failed, the law of 1921 was continued in operation for another two years, still as an emergency measure.
There is nothing temporary, however, in the wording of the new immigration law adopting the national origins formula for immigration control. Debates on the floors of Congress indicated plainly that the legislators felt they were establishing a permanent immigration policy to be followed for many years to come. With the exception of a comparatively few representatives from urban centers containing large settlements of the foreign-born, both the Senate and the House of Representatives were practically unanimous in endorsing he principle of numerical restriction.
Total of Admissions Fixed by Congress
The use of the national origins formula greatly simplifies the problem of numerical control. There is no longer the need for involved calculations with percentages and census statistics in order to determine just how many immigrants would be admitted to the United States under a certain scheme. The primary step in the use of the national origins formula is the fixing of a maximum total of admissions by Congress. In the present law, the annual total under the formula is fixed at 150,000, but, while the principle of restriction is definitely established, the total of authorized admissions may be changed at will. By 1928 for example, conditions may be such that Congress will feel warranted in authorizing a total of 300,000 quota immigrants annually. Two years later, perhaps, it may seem advisable to cut the total admission to 50,000. Congress will have only to survey conditions and then pass a simple resolution directing that for a stated period a stated total of quota immigrants shall be admitted annually to the United States.
Quotas National Rather Than Racial
Under the national origins formula, the distribution of this immigration total among the various quota classifications becomes merely an administrative function of the Executive Branch of the Government. Each nation already having contributed a certain percentage of the American people will be allotted a corresponding percentage of the immigration total as its quota. In other words, the American people are taken as they stand, and to them each year is added, in whatever number Congress may direct, an installment of European immigration reproducing in miniature the American composite.
All the quotas are national, not racial. No attempt is made to discriminate between the various racial groups within any nation. Each nation is allowed a fixed quota covering all who reside within its jurisdiction. Under the emergency law of 1921, for example, the quota for Turkey was 2,654 each year. In a typical year, only 158 alien admissions charged against the Turkish quota were actually Turks. There were, on the other hand, 658 Armenians, 631 Syrians, and 417 Hebrews. Indeed, more Greeks than Turks entered the United States under the Turkish quota during that year. The point was that all came from territory under the jurisdiction of the Turkish Government. Similar conditions prevail under the national origins formula, for the United States cannot presume to discriminate between the various peoples within the boundaries of a sovereign nation.
The underlying principle of the national origins formula is that the people of the United States today have a vested and equal right to say who shall join them. While the emergency law of 1921 permitted the foreign-born residents of the United States to determine the distribution of immigration quotas, the national origins formula gives equal voice to native-born and foreign-born alike. The formula seeks to avoid the charge of discrimination by treating all nationalities in proportion as they have contributed to the upbuilding of the American Republic.
The United States has departed definitely from the policy of encouraging white immigration from practically all sources, regardless of origin. Instead, there has been adopted the policy of stringent numerical restriction and the admission of aliens in proportion as the various nations of the Old World are represented in the existing make-up of the American people. The application of this new policy rests with the national origins formula, the adoption of which marked the most significant step in the direction of immigration control taken in three centuries of American history.

Illegal Immigration Hurts The USA

Great article exposing the negatives of illegal immigration.
http://www.lestdarknessfall.com/Pages/IllegalImmigration.htm

Stop Illegal Immigration!
Illegal Immigration Hurts Our Country
Illegal immigration is causing gross harm to our nation and it's time we do whatever it takes to put a stop to it. It is estimated that there are over 10 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States. That is more than the combined 2003 resident population of the following 11 US States: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Wyoming.
Here's a sampling of how illegal immigration hurts all residents of this country:
Suppresses wages and standards of living
Weakens our economy
Overwhelms social, educational, and medical services
Increases crime and weakens the rule of law
Let's cover these items in more detail.
Illegal Immigration Suppresses Wages and Lowers Our Standard of Living
In a capitalist economy, under true free market conditions, the cost of labor is simply a matter of supply and demand. This is theoretically how the United States' economy was designed to work. If there are more workers than jobs, all jobs pay less. If an employer cannot easily find employees with the skills they need, they offer more money to attract them. In a closed system, this works fairly well as population and economic growth are usually in equilibrium
Unfortunately, this is not how it works in this country. With the amount of illegal immigration that is allowed to occur, there are more low skilled workers than there are jobs. Thus, as illegal immigration increases, wages for those jobs decrease. If an unethical employer doesn't want to pay minimum wage, the employer can easily find an illegal immigrant willing to work for less because illegal immigrants are abundant and often desperate for even the smallest of incomes. By employing the illegal immigrant, the employer gains a number of advantages:
Lower cost of labor
No benefit costs
Unlimited hours, meager working conditions, etc.
In cases where employees are paid in cash and without records, the employer pays no money for Social Security, IRS, state disability insurance, etc.
Employers can get away with these practices, because their illegal employees stand to lose more if discovered. The employee won't dare complain for fear of being deported, and nothing will happen to the employer if they are caught. Criminal prosecutions of employers who use illegal immigrants are virtually non-existent and usually involve minimal punishment. As a result, employers who need unskilled laborers are encouraged to break the law and use illegal immigrants.
For every illegal immigrant that is employed for meager wages, there is a person who could legally perform that job that is not being employed. No matter how menial or undesirable that job is, there is a citizen or legal immigrant who would be willing to do the job at some price. If no illegal immigrants are available to work for a low rate of compensation, employers will have no choice but to offer more money until they find someone willing to do the work. Thus, the concept of minimum wages would be unnecessary because employers would have to use money and benefits to attract workers. Gardening, house keeping, manual labor and other low skill jobs would suddenly become more desirable to legal workers.
Let's assume that an employer is forced to hire a legal worker as a ditch digger, and in so doing must pay more to get someone to take that job. This raises the bar for people in that line of work and gets them a higher standard of living. Ditch diggers become more capable of buying goods and services, and become less dependent upon various types of government aid. They get medical insurance through their employer instead of the government. They buy their own food instead of getting food stamps. They place less demand on social programs, which should mean that less taxes are needed to support social programs. As less taxes are needed, legal workers are able to keep more of what they earn and use it to better themselves and our economy.
Now that the legally employed ditch digger is making more money, people with more marketable skills and credentials will need to get paid more money. After all, why go to college and pay up to $100,000 for an education if you will not make much more money than the ditch digger? Skilled labor will become a more valuable commodity because the value of labor in general is increased when the least skilled workers are well compensated. Thus, employers will have to offer even higher wages to educated/skilled laborers in order to provide an incentive for people to acquire education and skills necessary to perform those jobs. As a result, everyone makes more money. Since taxes are based on income, the government can maintain the same level of tax revenue while taking a smaller percentage of each worker's income since each individual income will be greater.
It is estimated that 44% of the decline in wages from 1980 to 1994 for unskilled workers and high school dropouts was directly caused by illegal immigrants depressing the cost of labor.
Illegal Immigration Weakens Our Economy and Currency
A huge number of illegal aliens come to this country for the purposes of getting a job that pays better than what is available in their own country. They then take a large portion of their earnings and send it back home to relatives. According to Time Magazine, the third largest source of income in the Mexican economy is money that is sent to Mexico from Mexican immigrants working in the United States. (Mexico is by no means the only country to receive this type of money. Immigrants from all over the world send US dollars back to their home countries).
As a result of this, money that should have been paid to a legal worker in the US and that would have presumably been used by legal workers to build a future for themselves in this country is instead sent out of this country. This means that the money is not being used to sustain and fuel our economy but instead subsidizes the economy of other countries.
Whenever a country loses more hard currency than it takes in, its economy suffers. Issues such as trade deficits are matters of great importance. If, for example, the United States buys a large number of goods from Japan and Japan buys few goods from the United States, Japan prospers and the United States weakens. Japan takes our money and pays it to their workers, who in turn spend it in the Japan and strengthens their economy. When illegal aliens send money to their home countries, they are in effect creating a severe trade deficit.
Illegal Immigration Overwhelms Social Services
The Federal Government requires health care providers to offer care to those who need it, even if they can't pay for it. As a result, health care facilities in areas with high populations of poor people often cannot make a profit because they spend so much of their resources treating people who cannot pay for these services. In general, illegal immigrants tend to be quite poor as they work for very low wages. They tend to not have health insurance and usually can't afford routine preventive medical care. When they do need medical care, it is often when they have become seriously ill or injured so the cost of their treatment is higher than an insured person who receives regular preventative care. Illegal aliens usually take their problems to a trauma center or hospital emergency room, where they are treated for free. Since the treatment facility gets no money for the treatment they render, they cannot afford to hire more workers. As a result, waiting rooms fill up, and some emergency rooms have announced that people should expect a minimum wait of 6 hrs before they can see a doctor, unless they have an urgent life threatening problem. As a result, everyone in that community suffers and gets less medical care as the medical facility loses it's ability to cope with the demand and lack of revenue.
This same problem happens in the public education system. Over the past decade class sizes have increased in American schools. A teacher told me that most districts in my area have more than 30 students per elementary school teacher. Can you imagine how hard it must be to teach 30+ 10 year olds anything, especially if a significant number of them don't even speak English? As a result of this problem, children of tax paying legal residents get less personal attention and a worse education because the public schools are spending their time and resources on people who aren't entitled to be here and who aren't paying into the system. That is grossly unfair.
This same problem affects our transportation system. Tax revenue governs our ability to maintain public roads and highways. Population growth estimates and census information contribute to our ability to predict the demand for transportation corridors. If people are sneaking into this country, avoiding many common forms of taxation and are avoiding being counted by census takers, we end up with too many cars for our transportation networks and not enough money to solve the problem. As a result, people who have played by the rules and live here legally find themselves spending more and more hours of their lives stuck in traffic rather than at home with their families.
The typical illegal alien household costs our nation about $7,000 more in aid than they pay in taxes. Since illegal immigrants are entering our country at an estimated rated of over 4,000 per day (specifically referring to the Arizona/Mexico border and not counting illegal entry in other places), the costs of illegal immigration are likely to keep growing at an incredible rate.
Here's a breakdown of some of the annual costs to the Federal Government (i.e. this doesn't count State and local government costs) of illegal immigration according to the Center for Immigration Studies:
Medicaid paid to illegal immigrants: $2.5 billion
Medical care to uninsured illegal immigrants: $2.2 billion
Food assistance programs for illegal aliens: $1.9 billion
Federal Prison and Court Costs for illegal aliens: $1.6 billion
Federal aid to local schools for illegal immigrants: $1.4 billion
Grand Total: $10.4 billion every year and growing rapidly
Other sources estimates the costs of illegal immigration to be greatly higher than the above conservative numbers. A recent study of Census Data estimated that illegal immigrants cost tax payers $7.4 billion dollars a year just in increased education costs. Yet another study finds the cost of educating illegal alien children to be between $29 billion and $36 billion dollars.
A recent study on the impact of illegal immigration to the State of California revealed that illegal immigrants in CA pay about $1.6 billion in taxes, and cost $10.5 billion in tax dollars, creating an annual $9 billion drain. And that's just one state!
The term "illegal alien" refers to someone who's very presence in this country is a violation of our laws. Tax paying legal residents receive worse health care, pay more taxes, get less education for their kids and have more crowded freeways because our government allows these criminals to exist in our country. We should be deporting people and closing our borders, not providing them public services at the cost of reducing services to law abiding residents.

Illegal Immigration Increases Crime
People who come here in violation of our nation's laws are criminals as the very act of coming here illegally is a crime. Often, in order to enter this country, illegal immigrants damage private and public property. Fences are cut at borders. Piles of litter and human excrement are found at commonly used rest stops near busy illegal border crossings. Dogs are poisoned at homes near the border to prevent them from calling attention to illegal immigrants traveling over their owners' property.
To make matters worse, some of the illegal immigrants crossing our borders have a history of far more serious crimes, including things such as theft, drug dealing, rape and murder. 95% of all outstanding murder warrants and 65% of all fugitive felony warrants in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens! (That's about 11,000 of the total 17,000 outstanding warrants). As of 2004 over 17% of our Federal Prison population consists of illegal aliens. Our border patrol and immigration workers constantly encounter dangerous criminals that have long rap sheets and are wanted by both foreign and US authorities.
That is not to say that all illegal aliens are drug dealing rapists and murders, but rather that we as a nation have a right to control who we let in and that we should be stopping such people from entering our country. By allowing illegal immigration to take place, we are shirking our responsibility to keep our nation safe and are not even trying keep such dangerous people from entering our country.
For those of you not inclined to believe my facts and assertions, go to a search engine, such as Google, and enter the following search terms or simply click on the links:
cost of illegal immigration Annual cost of illegal immigration
Another great source of information is Time Magazine's Sept 20, 2004 special investigation piece on America's Border

Leave it to Beaver TRIBUTE to Ward Cleaver and Fathers 1983

Ward's words of wisdom are wonderful!

No Wonder We HAve Health Care Problems

This story shines a bright light on one reason healthcare, and other government run social services are hurting. Make no mistake, politicians and legal resident scammers are also part of the problem, but to allow the continued assualt by illegal aliens on these services are the death blows. Here is just one example of an illegal alien who sadly, was hit by a drunken driver. He was allowed 9 years of medical services. He should have been deported as soon as he was well enough to travel. And these types of cases happen every day.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion/content/opinion
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Nine years ago, a drunken driver sent an illegal immigrant to Martin Memorial Medical Center, where he ran up more than $1 million in bills.
Today, Luis Jimenez, a former landscape worker who was left with the IQ of a 10-year-old, lives with his mother in a Guatemalan village. Meanwhile, doctors and lawyers in Florida are preparing for a three-week trial - set to begin Tuesday in Stuart - that will highlight holes in and raise questions about U.S. immigration and health-care policies.
Mark Krikorian, executive director for the Center for Immigration Studies, said the hospital was right. "We don't have an uninsured crisis. We have an immigration crisis," said Mr. Krikorian, noting that one-third of the 47 million uninsured in the U.S. are immigrants. "The long-term goal has to be reducing immigration of people who are going to end up in a hospital unable to pay. We need less legal immigration and better enforcement against illegal immigration."
This is why obtaining health care through a private company is the way to go. Or, sadly, if a legal citizen wants to receive health care through Uncle Sam, it should be an optional program, not mandatory. As always, if a legal citizen truly has a physical or mental problem that does not allow them to provide for themselves, they should be helped.
But most politicos in both parties do not want to do what is right and what common sense dictates. Instead, they want to use illegal aliens and the fears of some ignorant Americans for their own political gain. And until we vote these bottom feeders out and replace them with people who want to do what is right, things will not change for the better and we will continue our downwards nose dive into just another second class nation.

The Day Should Be Called Father Time's Day

I have not had my earthly dad here for Fathers' Day since 1996. One one hand, it seems like a million years since he was here, and yet, it also seems as if it has only been a matter of minutes. I can remember going to Save-More drugs and buying him a box of Dutch Masters cigars, a golf lighter, and fluid at the ripe old age of 12 with the money I had saved from doing chores.....or maybe whining! The old stand buy gift was always the largest jug of English Leather available. I swear they made it in a 50 gallon drum at one time. There was also 12 packs of Bud and fishing gear too.
But the best gift was not the ones I gave him, but the one he gave me, and that was his time. I can always remember him saying how fast time went by, and I never realized it until the second after his last breath. So for those who still have a pop kicking around, just remember, Fathers' Day ain't about the physical gifts, but all about TIME.
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Jimmy Carter in Gaza, 2009-06-16

Carter is a disgrace to our nation and should be brought up on charges. Carter also needs to have his visa revoked and secret service security pulled.He is openly anti American, anti Israel. President B. Hussein Obama needs to look in the mirror, because he is the new Jimmy.

John Ziegler Destroys Contessa Brewer About The Letterman/Palin Controversy

JZ shows what a sham of a network MSNBC. And Miss Brewer is a perfect example how some lib women use women that are conservative!

Good Job IRS

It is very hard to say anything nice about the IRS, I believe the department should not even exsist, but the finally did a very good deed: They informed an employer about fake or invalid social security numbers. Lets hope the feds follow up on these people to see if they need to be deported.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-desktop-raid12-2009jun12,0,783064.story
Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in the L.A. area, terminates more than 200 employees after an IRS audit finds that they had provided 'invalid or fraudulent' Social Security numbers.
By Patrick J. McDonnell June 12, 2009
No immigration agents descended on Overhill Farms, a major food-processing plant in Vernon. No one was arrested or deported. There were no frantic scenes of desperate workers fleeing la migra through the gritty streets of the industrial suburb southeast of downtown Los Angeles.For more than 200 Overhill workers, however, the effect was devastating: All lost steady jobs last month and now find themselves in a precarious employment market, without severance pay or medical insurance. It wasn't a hot tip or an undercover informant that helped seal their fates, but a computer check of Social Security numbers.

The Search Continues......

So Tex, aka Truthseekers, is not Mr. O'Brien. But the search will continue to out the attacker of innocent law officers and city officials. I was contacted by a source saying I had the wrong name.....D'OH! So I am sorry Mr. O'Brien.....But this will not stop me from naming Tex...truthseekers. Lunch is on me for anyone giving me Tex's name. He attends Modesto city council meetings often. It is also claimed he has possibly written letters to The Bee and maybe was also a guest editor. So who is he besides a mean, lying, evil man? We will see very soon!

Please Remain Silent Mr. Jihad

In another craptacular move, the Comrade and Chump is making the FBI and CIA read our enemies the Miranda rights. Yup, good ol' Barry treating our Islamo-fanactic opponents as if they were a petty criminal here in the states. This guy is truly a clear and present danger to our troops and our country.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=100731
The Obama Administration has ordered the FBI and CIA to inform terrorists overseas that they "have the right to remain silent" before probing them for information to save American lives.
According to Weekly Standard report by Stephen F. Hayes, a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee has revealed that "the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan."
Hayes noted that former CIA Director George Tenet said Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad refused to cooperate with officials when he was captured March 1, 2003.
"I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," Mohammad demanded.
Mohammad did not enlist the services of a lawyer until months after his capture and interrogation. But, according to the report, Tenet wrote in his memoirs that intelligence extracted from the terrorist saved countless American lives.
"I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal – read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote.
Hayes said, "If Tenet is right, it's a good thing (Mohammad) was captured before Barack Obama became president."

Modesto City Council Candidate Says Local Law Enforcement Officers Are Murderers

Beware Modesto. This man and some of his backers are making claims without facts or proof and are painting people and departments with a broad and hate filled brush. Is Robert placing these officers in harms way with their lies and fact less acquisitions? I say yes.
http://thehive.modbee.com/node/14093?page=1

Why don't you provide some quotes regarding holloway....
Submitted by Stanford4Modesto on Tue, 2009-06-09 18:48.
Where is that support?
And yes you are correct - I am calling the deputies murderers for hire.
And I do have facts. I have presented many of them.
Are you one of the deputies that brutalized and murdered Craig Prescott?
Maybe they should vote for you instead, right?
Who do you run with? Rogue cops of the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department?
Or the DA's office?

Thanks You Congressman Forbes

Finally a congressman who is willing to call out Comrade and Chump B. Hussein Obama when he lies and tells half truths.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpQOCvthw-o

Comrade B. Hussein Obama's Illegal Raiding Of Private Companies

via CSNNews.
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=48791
36 Congressmen Ask Obama to Return Authority Over Auto Bailout to Congress--But White House Says Its Not Over-Reaching Its PowerFriday, May 29, 2009By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer
Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio)
White House (CNSNews.com) - A bipartisan coalition of 36 members of the House of Representatives--including 30 Republicans and 6 Democrats--has sent a letter to President Obama asking him to return to Congress its constitutional legislative authority to oversee the bailout of the auto industry.In December, Congress failed to pass a bill authorizing a bailout of Chrysler and General Motors. President Bush and now President Obama, however, proceeded with a bailout process even without legislative autority. That process has cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and given the Executive Branch unilitaral and unprecedented authority to control what happens to the two major auto companies.“While we are mindful that time is of the essence, we are respectfully requesting that you return the Auto Task Force to its important advisory role to you and your Administration, but also return the Congress’ Constitutional legislative prerogatives before it further disrupts the lives of people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it,” says the letter.The White House is defending the work of the President’s Auto Task Force and is insisting that the president has not seized unconstitutional authority over the matter.The bipartisan coalition of congressmen who signed the letter to Obama are worried about the practicial economic consequences of the steps he has taken in the auto bailout as well as the constitutional implications for the role of Congress. “We are grateful to you and your administration for the leadership demonstrated. However, decisions being made by the Auto Task Force, and in the bankruptcy proceedings in New York, are more than troubling,” the letter said, referring to the Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings. On Thursday, General Motors reportedly reached a deal with bond holders and the Treasury Department to go into bankruptcy. Because of decisions made by the task force, the letter says, 9,000 workers at Chrysler plants will lose their jobs and 789 Chyrsler dealers have been slated to shut down. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) who wrote the letter, said the GM bankruptcy could lead to 100,000 dealership-related jobs nationwide and the closing of 14 GM plants. “The president is being ill served by the auto task force. They’re making decisions that I think are making a tough situation much worse,” LaTourette told CNSNews.com. “Now the president has off-loaded it and delegated it to this unelected and inexperienced – at least as far as the car business is concerned – automobile task force.” “For a bunch of folks who say they don’t want to be in the day-to-day operation and don’t want to manage the old Chrysler and the new Chrysler into bankruptcy, they sure seem to be doing that – telling them how much they can spend on advertising, rejecting opportunities to avoid bankruptcy for both Chrysler and GM,” he said. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded that the task force is not making direct decisions on employment, and said that 75 percent of auto dealerships remained open. “These are decisions that are made by companies about what it is they believe is the best path toward renewed viability for their company,” Gibbs told reporters Wednesday. “If it weren’t for the task force on autos, and if it weren’t for the president's intervention, a hundred percent of those dealerships would be gone, a hundred percent of those plants would be closed.” The letter states, “While we are mindful that time is of the essence, we are respectfully requesting that you return the Auto Task Force to its important advisory role to you and your administration, but also return the Congress’ constitutional legislative prerogatives before it further disrupts the lives of people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it.” The Bush administration initiated the federal bailout of the auto industry with $17.4 billion in bridge loans going to Chrysler and GM in late 2008. Congress had rejected an auto bailout, so the Bush administration tapped the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), even though Congress had only authorized those funds to be used for financial institutions such as banks and credit unions. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama expanded the program to include at least $1.1 billion toward covering the cost of Chrysler and GM warranties during the restructuring. But members of Congress are concerned because the task force sets viability standards, allowing it to dictate terms to the auto industry. Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.) said shutting Congress out leaves a worse deal for the taxpayers. “In the 70s, we had the Chrysler bailout where the taxpayers were paid with interest because at the legislative level you had people representing all these interests bringing them together and forging a workable plan,” McCotter, who signed the letter, told CNSNews.com. “What you’re seeing with the Auto Task Force is what was once an advisory group is now in the process of driving the entire process, deadlines, and bankruptcies for Chrysler and with GM the increasingly likely bankruptcy. Who do they answer to? They do not directly answer to the citizens.” McCotter is also displeased that the auto restructuring is being supervised through TARP, but said the law is so wide, he sees no legal conflict in using the TARP money. “It was wide as the Grand Canyon to allow the executive branch to do what it’s doing,” he said. Gibbs said that the administration does have “a major role to play.” “I think we are playing it in a way that is preserving and protecting as many jobs as possible, protecting as many communities as possible, and hopefully restructuring -- working to restructure an auto industry that has fallen on vastly hard times, and that we're doing all that we can to move that in a different direction,” Gibbs said. Still, members of Congress faulted the president for saying that the Chrysler bankruptcy would “not disrupt the lives of people who work at Chrysler or live in communities that depend on it.” “The White House auto task force seems to be pursuing policies that export the manufacturing base of the American economy,” Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said. “Our economic strength and our national security are dependent on the automobile, steel, aerospace and shipping industries. We must protect and strengthen these vital industries.” Further, the letter stated that employees made concessions across the country without knowing their plant would be closed. Gibbs said Congress clearly has input in helping to revive the auto industry. “Congress certainly is involved in auto decisions, obviously as it relates to setting fuel mileage standards that the President worked on last week, as well as proposals to create tax incentives to trade in older cars that aren’t doing as well on fuel mileage, to both increase auto sales and reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Gibbs said. “But I think the vast majority of members I think are appreciative of the efforts of the task force each and every day in order to keep as much as we possibly can in a viable auto industry here in America.”

Why The Outcry Over This?

More interesting, is look at the vocal opponents. Hmmmm. To tell you The Truth......seems a bit strange and quite revealing at the sametime. What were the motives of Tom O'Brien and Russell Harrison?

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/194505.html

Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2008
Modesto planners OK Tivoli project
Council next for plan for homes, stores; critics claim 'bait, switch'
By GARTH STAPLEYgstapley@modbee.com
A vision for east Modesto's first big-box stores combined with a huge housing development narrowly squeaked by planning commissioners late Monday.
The 4-3 vote sends the Tivoli project to City Council members Feb. 26. They will decide whether to seek annexation for 454 acres northeast of Sylvan Avenue and Oakdale Road.
Tivoli's key feature is 67 acres of megastores, which are expected to draw shoppers from around the region. Plans include as many as 3,193 new homes ranging in size from apartments and condominiums to regular houses and ranchette-sized estates.
City to view long-planned Tivoli project
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Acknowledgments
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 1
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 2
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 3
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 4
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 5
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 6
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 7
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 8
Proposed Final Tivoli Specific Plan - Chapter 9
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Table of Contents
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter I Introduction
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter II List of Commentors
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter III Comments & Responses
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter A
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter B
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter C
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter D
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter E
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter F
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter G
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter H
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter I
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter J
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter K
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter L
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter M
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter N
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter N.1
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter O
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter P
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter Q
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter R
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter S
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter T
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter U
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter V
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter W
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter X
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter Y
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Letter Z
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter III Letter AA
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter III Letter BB
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter III Letter CC
Environmental Impact Report Vol 2 - Chapter III Letter DD
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Table of Contents
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter I
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter II
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter III
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter IV
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter V
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter VI
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Chapter VII
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix A
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix B
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix C
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix D2
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix D1
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1 - Appendix E
Environmental Impact Report Vol 1- Appendix F
On The Hive: Adam Ashton's After Deadline blog
PDF Graphic: Tivoli proposal
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Concept papers also show a 14-acre elementary school, with an adjacent park of comparable size doubling as a rainwater basin.
Favoring the project were commissioners Kent Newswander, Ted Brandvold, Patricia Gillum and Chris Tyler. Commissioners Tom Berglund, John Sanders and Carolina Bernal voted "no," mostly because the plans eventually could transform quiet, rural McReynolds Avenue into a busy street.

Tom O'Brien, who lives west of the area in the proposal, accused developers of pulling a "bait and switch" by changing the plan sold to Modestans in 2001. Voters at that time indicated support for 2,448 homes -- 793 fewer than the current estimated maximum of 3,241. Also, the 2001 concept showed only a few acres of small stores -- nothing like the 67 acres of big-box shopping on the current concept plan.
Proponents have said the changes reflect the wishes of city officials concerned about a dearth of shopping for east Modesto residents, and market preference toward homes on smaller lots.
Russell Harrison, a civil engineer whose home also is west of Tivoli, agreed with O'Brien.
"No wonder people are frustrated and don't vote for taxes on roads, because they don't believe it's going to happen," Harrison said, referring to the 2006 failure of a sales tax hike that would have provided millions of dollars for road projects. "People voted on a plan, and the plan was changed. You're doing it again. Please have a little more respect for the voters of Modesto."
Harrison and O'Brien said Tivoli's huge commercial component would make more sense to the north, close to Riverbank's Crossroads shopping center.
"I would only assume that somebody in Modesto said, 'We're going to lose sales tax dollars,' " Harrison said. "It didn't have anything to do with good planning; it had to do with dollars."
Jim Hurst, who has lived on a small street within the Tivoli area for 32 years, said he worries that people coming and going could affect his privacy.
"There will be all sorts of activities that are not compatible with the lifestyle we have," he said.
Tivoli developers calmed many of the fears of Mable Avenue residents, whose ranchettes eventually would be surrounded by the huge stores, by promising a buffer layer of estate-sized lots between the old ones and the stores. Perhaps more important, developers agreed to block off Mable at Oakdale, keeping shoppers from overrunning the quiet street.
Patty Lundy, of the League of Women Voters of Stanislaus County, said the league supports Tivoli because its stores would employ residents, and because the plans call for 924 housing units priced to be affordable for low and very-low-income families.
Al Gonzales, who farms nearby, said Tivoli's land is cursed with hardpan and would not support high-yield crops or orchards.
"This land is perfect for houses," he said. "It couldn't grow anything except grass for cows."
Monday's four-hour-plus hearing largely ignored the fact that the single largest landowner within the Tivoli area does not intend to develop anytime soon.
Tom Trombetta, who owns the area's northeast quadrant, has said he will go it alone when he's ready, though he won't fight the plan to build up the rest.
Bee staff writer Garth Stapley can be reached at gstapley@modbee.com or 578-2390.

Poor Tex In Modesto

Here you go fellow Hiver's. This is truthseekers aka Tex, and rumored to be first named Tom.....my source is working on this, doing what he likes....having post removed because his nickname, which he told me in person, is Tex. But do not make mention of it because he believes that when he attacks Modesto city council members, law enforcement officers and departments, and Stanislaus county employees, he will be outed and his real name will be attached to his lies.
I believe he is actively involved in one or more local council seat races to get his friends elected. I imagine to continue to protect his identity and thus being held responsible for his many fabrications, slander, and libels. Here is the post that had Tex riled....

T#X
Submitted by jheaton on Mon, 2009-06-01 13:55.
You know exactly what I was saying and what I meant. But that does not matter to you. And that's fine.
You are no better than your drunken monkey sidekick GM. At least you are good for a laugh once in awhile because other than that, lying and fabricating for Stanny is all you do.

I also have been told that the Modesto Bee has published letters from Tex and there may also be an article about him. If anyone knows of this article please foward it to me so a may post it.