Charlie Daniels on Illegal Immigration

Well, this is a first: The first time I've ever posted a column written by a country-western singer. In fact, it's one of the few times I've ever posted anything written by someone but me. But despite its plain-folk language, I believe his words are worth considering. It certainly takes some guts to say what he said. Perhaps it's because in January, he had a mild stroke. Facing one's mortality makes many people decide to be more honest, even if it offends some people.

I don't know how everybody else feels about it, but to me I think Hispanic people in this country, legally or illegally, made a huge public relations mistake with their recent demonstrations.

I don't blame anybody in the world for wanting to come to the United States of America, as it is a truly wonderful place.

But when the first thing you do when you set foot on American soil is illegal, it is flat out wrong, and I don't care how many lala land left heads come out of the woodwork and start trying to give me sensitivity lessons.

I don't need sensitivity lessons, in fact I don't have any-thing against Mexicans! I just have something against criminals and anybody who comes into this country illegally is a criminal, and if you don't believe it try coming into America from a foreign country without a passport and see how far you get. What disturbs me about the demonstrations is that it's tantamount to saying, "I am going to come into your country even if it means breaking your laws and there's nothing you can do about it."

It's an "in your face" action and speaking just for me, I don't like it one little bit and if there were a half dozen pairs of gonads in Washington bigger than English peas, it wouldn't be happening.

Where are you, you bunch of lily-livered, pantywaist, forked-tongued, sorry excuses for defenders of The Constitution? Have you been drinking the water out of the Potomac again?

And even if you pass a bill on immigration, it will probably be so pork laden and watered down that it won't mean anything anyway! Besides, what good is another law going to do when you won't enforce the ones on the books now?

And what ever happened to the polls, guys? I thought you folks were the quintessential finger-wetters. Well, you sure ain't paying any attention to the polls this time because somewhere around eighty percent of Americans want something done about this mess, and mess it is, and getting bigger everyday.

This is no longer a problem, it is a dilemma and headed for being a tragedy. Do you honestly think that what happened in France with the Muslims can't happen here when the businesses who hire these people finally run out of jobs and a few million disillusioned Hispanics take to the streets?

If you, Mr. President, Congressmen and Senators, knuckle under on this and refuse to do something meaningful, it means that you care nothing for the kind of country your children and grandchildren will inherit. But I guess that doesn't matter as long as you get re-elected.

Shame on you.

One of the big problems in America today is that if you have the nerve to say anything derogatory about any group of people (except Christians), you are going to be screamed at by the media and called a racist, a bigot and anything else they can think of to call you.

Well, I've been pounded by the media before, and I'm still rockin' and rollin', and when it comes to speaking the truth, I fear not.

And the truth is that the gutless, gonadless, milksop politicians are just about to sell out the United States of America because they don't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to face reality.

And reality is that we would never allow any other group of people to have 12 million illegals in this country and turn around and say, "Oh it's ok, ya'll can stay here if you'll just allow us to slap your wrist."

And I know that some of you who read this column are saying "Well what's wrong with that?" I'll tell you what's wrong with it. These people could be from Mars as far as we know. We don't know who they are, where they are, or what they're up to, and the way the Congress is going, we're not going to.

Does this make sense? Labor force you say? We already subsidize corporate agriculture as it is, must we subsidize their labor as well?

If these people were from Haiti would we be so fast to turn a blind eye to them or if they were from Somalia or Afghanistan ?

I think not.

All the media shows us are pictures of hard-working Hispanics who have crossed the border just to try to better their life. They don't show you pictures of the Feds rounding up members of MS-13, the violent gang who came across the same way the decent folks did. They don't tell you about the living conditions of the Mexican illegal some fat cat hired to pick his crop.

I want to make two predictions.

No. 1: This situation is going to grow and fester until it erupts in violence on our streets while the wimps in Washington drag their toes in the dirt and try to figure how many tons of political hay they can make to the acre.

No 2: Somebody is going to cross that border with some kind of weapon of mass destruction and set it off in a major American city, after which there will be a backlash such as this country has never experienced, and the Capitol building in Washington will probably tilt as Congressmen and Senators rush to the other side of the issue.

I don't know about you, but I would love to see just one major politician stand up and say, "I don't care who I make mad, and I don't care how many votes I lose, this is a desperate situation and I'm going to lead the fight to get it straightened out."

I don't blame anybody for wanting to come to America , but if you don't respect our immigration laws, why should you respect any others?

And by the way, this is America and our flag has stars and stripes. Please get that other one out of my face.

Charlie Daniels

Will Obama Finally Take On the Teacher's Unions?

This article in the New York Times reports that the U.S. spends more money per student than any country in the world yet its achievement is in the bottom 1/3 of developed nations.

Not all of the blame can be laid at the teacher's feet. Some of it, for example, is the result of America's insistence on putting students of all abilities in the same class and forcing ever more of them to read Shakespeare even if they're reading on the 5th grade level and to solve quadratic equations when they can't do simple arithmetic in their heads.

But certainly some blame must go to the teachers' unions who, because the Democrats so fear their political power, have managed to continue to get contracts which give teachers virtual lifetime job security after just two or three years--even if a teacher burns out and her/his students learn less than similar students in other classes. In another blow against quality teaching, teachers get paid exactly the same whether they're excellent or poor.

The article suggests that President Obama may be willing to try to convince Democrats to take a stand. If anyone has the ability to persuade, it's him. Let's hope he succeeds.

Yet Another Example of African-American Racism

I received a press release titled, "Bay Area Welcomes 'Buy Black Only' Experiment"

That press release announced a promotional tour by a top-university-educated couple (pictured, right) who, for an entire year, pledged to shop only at African-American-owned businesses.

In other words, they were proudly proclaiming their essentially boycotting all businesses owned by Asians, Latinos, Whites, and Native Americans.

I find the racism of that troubling.

A goal of their promotional tour is to solicit sponsors to expand their efforts.

When I queried the PR firm (Flowers Communications, which cites among its clients, Sears, Wells Fargo, McDonald's, Honda, and the Chicago White Sox) that issued the press release, I found the response from its vice president, Ronald E. Childs (pictured, center) equally racist:

"Welcome to America. Jewish people advocate patronizing their own business community first, before venturing outside their own, as do Asians, Hispanics, Italians, the Irish, Polish and people of virtually every other culture."

Mr. Childs additionally attempted to justify "Buy Black Only" by citing Jim Crow and lynchings.

Dear readers, your thoughts?

Keys to Productivity

People often ask me how I accomplish so much. My key principles:

• Before making most decisions, whether it's to support amnesty for illegals or whether I should see a movie, I consciously assess the risk-reward ratio of doing it, including the opportunity costs. In assessing that," I usually think broadly: "What are the risks and rewards for the world?" But I do that thinking very quickly, which leads me to my next principle:
• I rarely ruminate; I take low-risk actions. I usually learn more by trying something than by more-than-brief thinking about it.
• With every task I'm doing, I ask myself, NOT is this the fastest way, NOT is this the best way, but is this the most time- and cost-effective way? So, for example, I am aware that this post would have been better if I took the time to provide an excellent example for each bullet but, especially because I'm so busy these days, rather than not post it at all, I wrote this in the most time-effective way possible.

Our Growing Glut of College Graduates

I've long warned against justifying going to college because of the GROSSLY misleading statistic that you earn much more with a college degree. See my previous writings on the topic, for example, this, which first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

But now, college degrees are becoming an ever WORSE value:

• The ever-higher percentage of high school graduates going to college forces professors to dumb down classes. That's a key reason why the percentage of college GRADUATES with good literacy skills is declining (from 40% to 31% in the last decade alone.)
• The glut of college graduates. As the quality of college graduates declines while their supply goes up, employers are loathe to hire them, not just because their supply is high and quality is low, but because government-mandated costs of hiring Americans continues to escalate: social security, workers comp, unemployment insurance, mandated diversity and sexual harassment training, etc. The latest, of course, is the ObamaCare requirement that employers provide health care for not only employees but an extra percentage tacked on to pay for low-income people who don't work for the employer. Ever more, it makes sense for employers to automate or offshore, and to hire what Americans it needs, part-time, temp.
• The price tag of a college education continues to soar, far in excess of the inflation rate. The published sticker price for four years at many brand-name private college is $200,000. And MOST students do not graduate in four years. Indeed, when you look at the 200,000 college freshmen that graduated in the bottom 40% of their high school class, 3/4 of them don't graduate even if given 8 1/2 years! And even if they defy the odds, they usually have attended a third-tier college with an easy major such as sociology, neither of which moves many employers to pay them more than they could have earned straight out of high school. And if such students hadn't gone to college, not only would they not have accumulated all that debt, they wouldn't have had to endure years of boring, too-difficult-for-them courses, and the resulting non-stop assault to their self-esteem.

Well,, I've said much of that in previous posts. What's the most recent data show about college graduates:

ATThe just released national poll of employers is titled: "College Graduate Hiring Declines." The report states, for example, "55% of companies said that 2010 graduates are in a less advantageous position than other job seekers – and the top two reasons are the economic climate and their lack of qualifications."

And this from Bloomberg: College Grads Flood U.S. Labor Market With Diminished Prospects.

W

WhWhen will prospective college students and especially the parents of not academically oriented high school students and their counselors realize that for many students, a wiser post-high-school path is an apprenticeship, on-the-job-training, or career training in the military.

The Most and Least Trusted Professionals

A survey found that the least trusted profession is--no surprise--politician, followed by salesperson (especially car salespersons) financial services "account executives,") and lawyers.

I'd add these to the list:

• clergy. Whether or not they're seducing underage parishioners, they're selling snake oil--trying to convince people to place faith in a God who allows billions of people, including newborn babies to die of agonizing diseases such as cancer.
• chiropractors. Studies not funded by the chiropractic industry show generally low efficacy yet chiropractors market themselves relentlessly, often beyond what they can responsibly claim to cure. The only area that NIH studies find chiropractors helpful for is lower back pain and even there, no more efficacy than treatment by a physician.
• journalists. I have the most disdain for that profession because it has so much power to change society and uses that power so irresponsibly. Although most journalists have experience at nothing other than writing, they have the hubris to believe they know what's best for the world and are so sure of it that they abandon their nearly sacred obligation to present issues in full dimension, fairly, and instead, manipulate readers into believing what they believe and censor or destroy those who dare disagree. Instead of being wise stewards of the marketplace of ideas, they are the Barbarians at its gate.
  

The professionals I most trust:

• Librarians. I find them trustworthy and helpful. (Of course, they have little incentive to be untrustworthy.)
  
• Nurse practitioners and salaried physicians (e.g., those employed by Kaiser). Too many physicians who are paid per patient and per procedure are tempted by financial reward to prescribe treatments that yield them more money, even when not necessarily in the patient's best interests. And because physicians' training is so long, hard, and expensive, they feel entitled.
  
• Philosophers. I think the world would be better run if led by an ideologically diverse tribunal of philosophers.
  

The First Honest Resume

The standard resume helps neither the candidate nor employer to find the right match:

• Job seekers, often with the help of a resume-writing whore, excise or put makeup on their warts and pad their accomplishments more than a flat-chested hooker pads her bra.
  
• Employers are routinely deceived by resumes and at minimum learn little about what the candidate is really like. That's also true of job interviews but I'll save that for another post.
  

Wouldn't a candidate be more likely to be hooked up with his or her right employer if, for example:

• She said she's not a "team player who delights in exceeding customer expectations." Rather, she's motivated by meaningful projects that require her to work by herself, and her resume included a quote from her last performance appraisal that indicates that.
  
• Rather than saying how fascinated he is with the company's widget, he said he doesn't care either way about the widget. He cares mainly that he's working with smart, ethical people and that he gets moderately difficult projects in moderate quantity.
  
• Rather than saying she left her position because the company changed direction, she said she got fired from her job because she couldn't stand her boss who insisted on micromanaging her even though he had half her IQ. She included a quote from her co-worker that attests to that.
  
• Rather than saying, "I'm open to new opportunities," he said, "After three years of sitting in front of a computer all day I've had enough of that, I'm eager to use my people skills."
  
• Instead of filling her resume's employment gap with a series of BS consulting assignments, she said she took two years off to care for her new baby. (Bosses unsympathetic to hiring mommy-track employees will rarely give parents the flexibility and lower workload that involved parents often want.)
• Rather than hiding that he's 60 years old and weighs 300 pounds, he includes a current photo with his application. If the employer doesn't want an old fatty, s/he won't give him the job anyway. The employer would have wasted his time and an interview slot and the job seeker will have wasted the time and energy to prep, go to and through the interview. The right employer will be impressed with that applicant's integrity.
  

I am well aware that many employers will reject an honest resume but if you send out enough of them, the right employer for you will be more interested in you than someone who falsely claims to be a "team player and a dynamic self-starter who delights in exceeding customer expectations."