Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

As a financial markets professional, I am regularly amazed by how economically ignorant Lou Dobbs, one of our leading business talking heads, is.

His views opposing "outsourcing", for example, are based in pure emotion and not supported by any substantial data that I can find (it seems clear that outsourcing has not hurt overall employment in the class of people that would watch Dobbs' show).

But a piece he did recently on some of the provisions in the immigration bill really is an eye-opener. (See YouTube window below to watch the 3 1/2 minute piece.) I have not done any independent verification of Dobbs' claims, but it would be easy enough to do. Given the involvement of Ted Kennedy, who talks about "the people who deserve to benefit from this bill" (i.e. non-Americans who "deserve" access to American taxpayer dollars, and the language of Harry Reid who called illegals "undocumented Americans", nothing would surprise me.

Dobbs basically has it right when he says (in a different video clip) that "The Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Bill runs perilously close to being an outright deceit and fraud."

It is a shocking piece of political suicide by the Republican Party for their to be even a modicum of support for a bill which includes provisions described by Dobbs. President Bush probably cost the GOP control of the Senate by firing Donald Rumsfeld just after the last election instead of before it. He is substantially responsible, in addition to Congress, to demoralizing the GOP base by going along with massive Congressional overspending rather than governing as a Reaganite. And how, Bush is taking one last huge stab at the political fortunes of his party by supporting this Immigration Bill.

Let me be clear: I am not anti-immigration, including by Mexicans. I am anti-illegal immigration and against illegals being eligible for anything that is funded by American taxpayers. For example, the ideas that they should get in-state tuition or be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit are truly offensive to anyone with a sense of propriety and good government.

Another CNN/Dobbs report about some of the provisions of the Immigration Bill leaves me shaking my head, and again it makes me wonder how anyone to the right of Ted Kennedy, much less any Republican, could be supporting this.
(I wouldn't bother watching the comments from his viewers...just the first half of the piece)