Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

How the debate was

   Anyone bemoaning the state of rhetoric or young people's civic involvement in this country would not have been encouraged by the debates on Questions 4 and 6 last night at Morgan. The light brigade was out front with a sign (right), but attendance in the hall was sparse-- Mark Steiner and his A/V squad of two, Rob Lang of WBAL, about 7 League of Women Voters ladies and about 15 audience members for the first debate and 60 or so for the second.

    The first, anti-aliens v dreamers, was with Regina O'Neil of CASA, who teaches Spanish at Poly and is married with five kids, and a guy Charles Lollar, an executive at the uniform company Cintas, who ran against Steny Hoyer in 2010 and is married with four kids. After everyone's fecundity was established, Charles the executive hit his "we can't afford it" points on down the line: MD's broke, can't afford to give a $17,000 tuition break, "I may like the way your hair looks, Regina, but if I was your husband I might have to tell you you can't afford to go to the salon any more, and MD needs to do the same thing."
     Lollar opined that illegal immigrant/aliens can work hard and pay full tuition just like someone from New Jersey might could to go to school here, he himself had worked his way through Emory as a janitor (wonder if he cleaned up after Keiffer Mitchell?), and furthermore they're illegal immigrant aliens and so it's illegal to hire their illegal alien selves after college anyway, and if you don't like it, "I saw Keiffer Mitchell's walking around the hall out there, go talk to him about fixing our broken immigration system."
     Regina O'Neill's retorts seemed woefully underprepared-- no numbers, no evidence. She did manage to work her points in here and there, but not in a methodical way: these kids have been here their whole lives, we shouldn't punish kids for parents' sins, they're not eligible for federal loan programs, their parents have been working and paying taxes, etc.
     They dickered around in circles a bit, then Lollar's line items of points turned finger-pointy and mad dad with a side of sexism-- there was a low booing groan when Lollar talked about the injustice of aliens taking away jobs when there's 20% of black men in Baltimore unemployed. (Too bad his audience was about 80% female).
      Eventually audience questions were taken, one regarding the cost of the act. O'Neill offered that there's an estimated 435 "dreamers" who are expected to take advantage in 2013 if the law passes. Lollar did some kind of quick math, and I forget what his math was, but $17,000 x 435 x 4 = $29.6 million for four years -- assuming that there really are 435 kids who would meet the criteria and they're taking the places of out-of-state tuition payers, and none of them go to community college first. O'Neill had no retort and that was that.
Winner: Meh.

Finally, after an asscramping full hour of question 4, Maggie Gallagher entered the room  in a purple shirt, black skirtsuit, flats, fuschia lipstick and that bob and took to the stage. On the pro-6 side was the Keiffer Mitchell of hall-walking fame, resplendent in a perfectly fit grey suit, white shirt and blue silk tie, a full two feet taller than Gallagher unfurled to his full extension (fortunately the debate was conducted sitting down). Mark Steiner laid out Mitchell's impeccable bloodline, plus his wife and two children, with no mention of the absence of Sultan Shakir, the promised rep from Equality Maryland. Maggie Gallagher was introduced as the founder of NOM, and refreshingly no mention of a husband or kid(s).
     And with opening statements came some kind of pounding thrash-rap starting up from elsewhere in the student center; over its punishing thuds Mitchell laid out the history of the bill: it had come up twice, the second time the house and senate built a broad coalition and built in lots of protections for religious people, the NAACP supports it, Obama supports it, it's a civil rights issue, making all MDers equal "under duh law." (well it's odd, an otherwise well-spoken person turning out their th like Moose Mason.)
    Maggie Gallagher in turn opined that marriage is about us as a society holding male-female marriage as a special enshrined paragon, or something, and we have marriage because "we need to bring male and female together to create the next generation." If that sounds kind of creepy and also like using the word to define the word, it was. Not to mention creating generations is not a problem in Baltimore city, marriage or no. She also noted she's a Maryland resident (lives in MoCo, apparently) and is voting against 6 because her Roman Catholic church tells her to, and she's supporting the Dream Act for the same reason. "The campaign ads in Maryland I have nothing to do with, but I think they get it right."

 Audience questions were submitted on cards, as is the League of Women Voters protocol, and most were for Maggie. Doesn't the high divorce rate indicate hetero marriage is not so stable? Does she think infertile people should be allowed to get married? What about civil unions? Keiffer zinged back,  "I don't want my child to grow up and enter into a civil union, I want them to grow up and get married," but to the other questions Gallagher laid out various easily challenged statements that he left unchallenged. Like, that other than some tribe in Africa where two women can get married, we don't have any examples of societies with same-sex marriages with which to study what the end result might be (Uh, Europe? Canada?)
    Mercifully the debate wound down. Then some twentysomething woman with a septum ring in a newsboy cap started yelling at Gallagher "I just have to say this to you!" and went on in a not-very-coherent rant about how wrong NOM's strategy was to try to pit the blacks against the gays (but with many many more words). Gallagher smiled beatifically, said nothing and waited for the woman to turn and stalk off down the hall with her female friend before descending from the stage in her small black flats.

Friday, March 2, 2012

SRB to Obama: Bmore Won't Enforce Your Immigration Laws

Baltimore joins with DC in refusing to enforce federal immigration laws locally. The Obama administration seemingly can't win -- it's deported more undocumented immigrants than any other and is trying to pilot a program here to prioritize violent criminals and leave otherwise law-abiding residents alone, yet both the rat wangers and the liberals are enraged, and the Mayor's order takes it a step beyond keeping ICE out of Central Booking: "No City department, agency, officer or employee shall discriminate against any resident of Baltimore City based on confirmed or suspected race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, immigration status, and/or inability to speak English."

Thursday, March 29, 2007

March 29

The body found a-floating next to the Constellation was ID'd as James Lee Butler, 41. So far no signs of foul play, odds are 341-1 favoring that the ME's office will pronouce the death "undetermined."

Travis D. Terry, 24, a County man who killed his friend Edwin Leon Potillo III, also 24, and shot and robbed his girlfriend, was spared the death penalty by Judge Kathleen Cox.

An unID'd woman's body has found mouldering in Linthicum.

In what "must have looked like a scene from the TV series 'The Untouchables'" (?) County police raided the Trial Club on Cove Rd., an alleged unlicensed bar in North Point.

The armed robbery trial of Corey McLeaurin, 29, of the 3400 block of Gwynns Falls Parkway, is scheduled for 9:30 tomorrow morning before Judge Wanda Heard. A Baltimore City Grand Jury indicted McLeaurin April 11, 2006 for armed robbery, use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence and other related counts. Court documents allege that on March 17, 2006 McLeaurin and another man robbed Bel-Airian Mark Beckwith, 57, of $5,900 cash in the parking lot of the Village of Cross Keys shopping center (between Roland Park, Poly and 83). The victim shot and injured McLeaurin during the robbery. Another suspect was shot and killed, and the State's Attorney’s Office later found the shooting was justified.

What the?! Homeland security is making raids across Baltimore, and has made 50... make that 69, arrests!
This should come as jolly news to readers who endorsed more raids after the 7-11 smackdown.

New stomach-churning details in the case of BarfCo serial killer Charles Burns.

Denny's manager Michael Fredrick, 52, was stabbed 32 times by David Burton, who "had just taken hits of cocaine and heroine [sic]" and was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder.

It's the towns vs. the gowns as Tuscany-Canturbury neighbors attempt to zone the Phi Psi's boozy, deliquent urinatin' fun out of their residential district. On the Phi Psi's side, no one less than NY Mayor and former brother Michael Bloomberg.