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June 20, 2008
 Dianne Feinstein: You May Not Agree—But I Say She’s Senile!
By Joe
Guzzardi
Dianne Feinstein is a power-mad, crazy old coot afflicted with a
God complex that makes her continued presence in the U.S.
Senate a threat—not only to immigration reform patriots but also
to all Americans.
If that sounds exaggerated, spend five minutes reading my column
and I’ll prove it to you.
Feinstein was infamously back in the California news last week
when she intervened to prevent 17-year-old Fresno high school
valedictorian
Arthur Mkoyan’s deportation. The student and his family—whose
tourist visas expired thirteen years ago—had been ordered
deported before Feinstein interceded by introducing a private
Senate bill to delay the process.
Feinstein explained herself in her usual, idiotic way—Mkoyan is
a fine young man from an excellent family, just the kind we need
more of in the U.S., to send him back to Armenia where he knows
no one would be cruel,
blah, blah, blah…[Senator
Tries to Keep Valedictorian from Deportation, By Chuck
Afflerbach, CNN, June 10, 2008]
Two big problems:
-
Since they must pass both Houses of Congress and be signed
by the president, private bills have almost no chance of
being enacted. Of the 235 introduced during the last three
years, only four passed.
Feinstein’s action then is a meaningless gesture— an insulting
slap in the face to the normal, legally-established ICE
procedures to deport immigration law violators. Mkoyan’s case
has been in litigation for more than ten years. Every decision
has come down against Mkoyan, including one by the usually
sympathetic-to-illegals
Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
-
Private immigration bills are one of Feinstein’s favorite
tricks.
In 2006, Feinstein introduced
three such bills on behalf of fourteen people: the families
Arreola, Placencia and Yamada.
Here are a few of the phrases Feinstein used to plead their
cases: “bright and engaging,” “alcoholic father,” “physically
abusive,” “ taking nursing classes,” “honor student,” “ mother
was killed in a car crash…orphaned,” “popular and trustworthy,”
“junior varsity baseball…varsity football…girl’s softball…”
“enormous hardship” and of course, “out of the shadows”.
And, curiously, for the handful of Senators listening but not
already persuaded, Feinstein threw in this one to seal her case:
“They own their own car.”
Feinstein, therefore, creates her own version of immigration law
that indefinitely delays deportation for anyone she, and she
alone, deems worthy—thus, “The Law According To Dianne
Feinstein.”
Sadly for those of us who think that immigration laws should be
enforced, Feinstein can introduce private bills until the cows
come home.
And the possibilities are truly limitless.
As a veteran teacher in one of California’s largest school
districts, I can say without fear of contradiction that any Open
Borders advocate could pick out dozens of students illegally in
the U.S. from among California’s 6 million K-12 enrollment,
highlight their outstanding qualities (while ignoring their less
attractive ones) and do the Feinstein song and dance.
In addition to her crusade this week on behalf of visa
violators, Feinstein stubbornly stuck to her (empty) guns about
California’s need—from her narrow viewpoint— for more
agricultural workers.
Less than a month ago, Feinstein had
her ears pinned back on the Senate floor, when Majority
Leader Harry Reid stripped out of a supplemental spending bill
her language that would have amnestied millions of farm workers
and created thousands more visas.
After suffering such a public humiliation among her peers,
Feinstein—if she had her wits about her—would conclude that the
Ag Workers issue is dead and that she should lay low, at least
for the time being.
Unsurprisingly, Feinstein took a different course.
When many readers, irate over Feinstein’s
ag worker duplicity, e-mailed her they received in reply a
long list of unsubstantiated statistics about California’s
alleged farm crisis.
Feinstein’s mail included this sentence, without quoting a
source: “Between 2006 and 2007, 13,280 farms shut down in the
United States, 1,000 of which were in California.”
If 1,000 California farms shut down, you can’t prove it by me, a
native Californian. Every week, I attend at least one of
five local farmer’s markets—in
Lodi,
Davis,
Sacramento and two in
Stockton. They’re booming. Patrons have to stand in line to
pay the vendors.
Furthermore, in the twenty years I’ve lived in
Lodi, the
number of wineries has increased three-fold. For the
uninitiated, and perhaps Feinstein is one,
grapes have to be grown and picked before a winery is
established.
Attached to Feinstein’s response is this crazy 2006
picture of Toni Scully, a Lake County, CA pear grower, which,
according to Feinstein, “proves” that fruit is
“rotting” and that the guest worker need is “urgent”.
The photograph originally appeared in the New York Times.
[Pickers
Are Few, and Growers Blame Congress, By Julia Preston
September 22, 2006]
What I see, however, is a staged photograph with ripe
pears, obviously hauled in from the orchard (since no trees are
in sight) for the photo-op. (Read
Steve Sailer’s pear “crisis” expose
here.)
Here’s what I know about pears: when I need them, whether they
are in season or not, I can buy all I want of several varieties
at the local supermarket for about $1.00 a pound. What more is
there to say?
Omitted from Feinstein’s deceitful 2008 mail, two years after
the picture was taken, is the important fact that last year
(2007), in response to a possible worker shortage
California State Senator Pat Wiggins introduced
SB 319 that increased the maximum number of hours California
minors can work during the peak harvest.
Wiggins’ bill, which Schwarzenegger
signed last October, allows teenagers to work up to 10 hours
a day and forty-eight hours weekly during the summer months.
SB 319 is the correct way to approach potential labor shortages:
look for solutions in our own backyard before issuing hundreds
of thousands of visas for foreign-born workers.
My explanation of Feinstein’s bizarre behavior: she’s
crazy—senile.
I
first advanced my theory of creeping senility in the U.S.
Senate a few months ago when I suggested that
Teddy Kennedy might be afflicted. That was well before his
recent brain cancer surgery and also before New Mexico
Senator Pete Domenici announced his retirement because of
dementia.
Reader Molly Powell took me to task for my comments about
Kennedy. She reminded me that Kennedy has been sticking it to
America on immigration for more than four decades.
But that’s not Feinstein’s case.
Not that long ago, immigration reform analysts considered
Feinstein a moderate. In fact
Better Immigration.Com, a website that grades Congress on
its immigration voting patterns, rates Feinstein a
“C” over her career but a
“D-“ from 2005-2008.
And Feinstein got “F” and “F-“ on ending chain
migration, unnecessary visas while endorsing amnesty and
promoting more foreign workers.
Some observers say that Feinstein’s immigration cave-in is a
logical extension of California’s increasingly volatile
political environment.
But why should Feinstein be swayed by outside forces, whoever
they may be? Feinstein’s not up for re-election until 2012.
Maybe she won’t run.
Whether Feinstein runs or not and whether she wins or not, so
what? She’s a
multimillionaire married to a billionaire.
On June 22, Feinstein turns 75. According to
a study by Richard Posner, more than 16 percent of Americans
her age show signs of senile dementia.
I say Feinstein is one of them.
She nuts…and that explains better than anything else Feinstein’s
continuingly irrational immigration positions.
Joe Guzzardi [e-mail
him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor.
In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has
been writing
a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive
to
VDARE.COM. |
