[craigimass]

Hey, Dry....
Just about EVERYTHING is a waste of time. We could call them pastimes, though.

Let me be clear and 100% agree with you on this. Big business has no party. Whoever pays them the most, or deregulates them the most, etc. - will be who they support. I have no idea of the party affiliations of MANY big corporations. But the fact remains that the poor person who wants to work hard and send some money home to a family living in total poverty is NOT the bad person......you or I, if we had 1/2 a brain and conscience, would do the same if we were watching our family starve.

The culprit, in this case, is spelled US or USA. That means that profit....or divisiveness, or politics or something else....other than what is good for the country, drives the debate. That makes compromise impossible and gives everyone what they want...business gets to keep saving money, the pols can continue to divide us, etc.

I'm not just blaming big business either. A lot of people, probably some here, either use immigrants...or don't ask.....or would not care. Heck, let me admit it right here. I don't really care who cuts my lawn. I don't check. Sure, I never hired an illegal in all my years as a business owner....I 'm the sucker who is too honest to cheat on taxes that way. At the same time, I STILL don't care who cuts my lawn or cleans my hotel room. That, IMHO, is someone else's business.

Rhetoric such at that expressed in the (email copied) first post of this thread...is, IMHO, ridiculous and divisive and does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. That is in addition to it being largely false.....if you are gonna count one side of the equation (cost), you have to count the other (revenue)...as I have laid out in my former posts.

As to big business and the GOP...let me phrase that better. It was Senator Phil Graham and his wife along with conservative (GOP) think tanks who pushed for, and succeeded, in deregulation of banks and wall street...which caused the current crisis (to a large degree). Grahams wife sat on Enrons board, GW called Ken Lay "Kenny Boy", etc.

The US Chamber of Commerce, who fights for business - keeping the minimum wage low (this relates to the immigrants too), etc...is widely known as a GOP org. The GOP constantly promotes "tax cuts for business"...

I'm not commenting on those cuts, just saying that the GOP and Business have a LOT in common. Then again, Warren Buffet is true blue - but he's not calling for tax cuts...in fact, he is calling for people like himself to pay more.

OH, last point. The GOP had 100% total control for a long time. Was the immigrant "problem" fixed under their watch? Not that I saw. Only the current economic mess seems to have slowed the flood.