Last month I donated to a political campaign for the first time in my life for my family’s congressional district back in Delosa. I made a deal with myself that I would never donate to the campaign of anyone that runs on border hawk positions front and center and of course I broke that deal with myself on my first political donation to Jim Murali a few weeks ago. The thing is that he’s running against “conservative” Republican* Bob Markam, who has represented the district since I was a kid and is one of the more despicable congresscritters in Washington. Murali may be indistinguishable from him politically, but I know people that know Murali personally (he went to my high school and grew up near where I live) and they all say glowing things about him. In the past I’ve tried to work on the campaigns of people running against Markam, which obviously isn’t possible living where I currently do.
One thing that makes me slightly uncomfortable is the disclosure aspect of it. I don’t mind being on record as making the donations that I have for anyone that really wants to know who I’ve donated to, but they made me disclose who my employer is. I’m not sure why I am so uncomfortable with that since I don’t expect to be reprimanded for donating to the wrong entity, but it doesn’t seem right that their name should be on a political donation that they had no say in and I can easily imagine situations where I wouldn’t want any trail to exist between my employer and myself for whenever I am at odds with the views of my employer.
On the other hand, I guess the reason that they do it is as an anti-corruption measure to make sure that employers aren’t pressuring employees to donate to campaigns or (more likely) making donations by proxy. As someone that doesn’t like the restrictions of free speech and whatnot of McCain-Feingold and thinks that transparency is a better mechanism, I shouldn’t be at all uncomfortable with this… but I guess I am, a little.
* – As far as I am concerned, he stands for nothing except his standing within the GOP and his own re-election. He is as sincere as a maggot in all that he says and does.
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The only campaign I’ve ever contributed to was Tom Tancredo.
{The rest of this post was modified by trumwill. A post that mentions the immigration issue in passing is not an invitation to use Hit Coffee as a platform for anti-immigrant commentary}
What anti-immigrant commentary? The Rumbaut/Gonzales research I cited wasn’t flattering about the *descendants* of recent immigrants. The parts of their paper about immigrants themselves (that I didn’t cite) made them look good.
I made a deal with myself that I would never donate to the campaign of anyone that runs on border hawk positions front and center…
I’m on the flipside – having promised myself I wouldn’t donate to (or vote for) politicians who seem to think encouraging lawbreaking is a good idea.
And yet I’m now stuck considering a situation in which I’d likely wind up casting my vote to support a guy who believes exactly that for Prez, over someone who I am convinced is 100% racist and for whom the pattern of lying is getting worse every day.
It’s almost enough to make a guy vote for Nader.
Scotty,
Fair enough, anti-immigration-because-they-breed-bad-citizenry then. In any case, it’s of a more starkly political nature than we prefer at this site and touches too heavily on one of the subjects (race/immigration/Iraq/Bush) that are either handled delicately or not at all. The recent post on abortion is about as baldly political as I like to get.
I’ve been meaning to write some guidelines. Maybe this will spur me on to do so.
Web,
Ahhh, the compromises the system requires of us. I miss the Natural Law Party. I took some quiz a while back that said that they were the party that most reflected my beliefs and they were the ace-in-the-hole if I couldn’t stand voting for either of the two major-party candidates. They appear to be a bunch of new agey kooks, though, which probably says more about me than I would care to admit.
How much did you donate? I think they only have to report you if you donate more than $200 or $250. Something like that.
BTW: I the hawkish position on the border is costing the GOP. Not building the fence part but the idiots that go on the campaign trail and say they’d send all the illegals back to Mexico. There’s a bunch of idiots challenging the incumbent U.S. House representative out here because he supports finding a way to integrate this people in to American society (a position I agree with). Though I’m not overly fond of my representative, he’s way better than these kooks that are challenging him.
Abel,
There’s a basic question – do you, or do you not, believe people should follow the law.
If you believe the law should be followed, and believe that elected officials who’ve failed to enforce existing law (especially after being promised that it would be enforced after the last amnesty) are the problem, then the right thing to do is to try to unseat those elected officials who don’t share your view.
From my perspective, I see a severe problem in almost every form of “legalization” that’s been proposed – most assuredly because it’s giving the big middle finger to friends and relatives who’ve immigrated the legal way, are currently jumping through the hoops right now, and would basically be told “what a chump you are for following the rules.”
As for supports finding a way to integrate this people in to American society (a position I agree with): You presume a desire to integrate. This is a topic of much debate, especially since remittances from America topped oil in the past 2 years to become Mexico’s #1 source of income and one of McCain’s top aides has been shouting for illegal and legal immigrants alike to “think Mexico First.”
Also: if you call people “kooks” and “idiots” for wanting the law enforced, you’re not giving a very good reason for them to ever see even the reasonable portion of your view (which would be that the immigration policies and quotas may need some reform, and is something I can agree with).
There’s a basic question – do you, or do you not, believe people should follow the law.
Some laws are more worthy of being obeyed than others. That’s what I tell myself when I’m going 75-80mph down the freeway day in and day out. Absolutely no issue as complex as immigration comes down to a single question. Those that suggest that it does (whether the question is the conservative”Do we or do we not enforce the law?” or the liberal “Are we or are we not a nation of immigrants?”) are ignoring a whole lot of other questions.
And with that, let’s let this thread die. It was never intended to be an immigration post.
My apologies, Will. Abel’s bit on “kooks” and “idiots” was over the top in vilifying those he disagreed with, and I felt it deserved a response.