Guest Lecturer

THE FUTURE OF REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP

We are stuck in a period of ordinary politics when we need to be transformed into a period of extraordinary politics and bold leadership to address the important issues of the day, including national issues such as global terrorism and energy independence to local issues such as traffic congestion. At the state and national levels we have bipartisan paralysis; condescending Democrats/liberals and sanctimonious Republicans/conservatives content to call each other names and fix blame but not willing to come together to solve problems. The paralysis benefits the Democrats because the Republicans are the majority party. In Virginia, the Republican led House and Senate can’t seem to work with each other. Republicans are bogged down on taxes, marriage and guns. While these issues play well with the Republican base, they turn off the vast majority of non-movement conservatives. Republican ascendance to power in Virginia has ebbed. The quality of our stewardship of the State and national governments is being questioned. We have little influence at the local level in Fairfax.

In Fairfax, Republicans are out of sync with the needs, wants and moods of the majority of voters. We received 38%.of the vote last November. As the party activists become more conservative and our candidates become more ideologically rigid, moderate Republican and independent voters either stay home or vote Democrat. It is also argued that conservative voters stay home because they are disillusioned Our vote totals and our volunteer numbers are declining rapidly. Last year, the most conservative Republican candidates were defeated by the largest margins. Our statewide candidates lost all magisterial districts. In Braddock District, Kilgore lost all precincts, Bolling won one precinct and McDonnell won three precincts. Our Delegate candidates lost all precincts except one.

Many of our leaders ignore these facts. It has been said that the problem with ideology is that it “edits reality and paralyzes thought”. Our conservative ideologues argue that we lost because our candidates were not conservative enough or they blame the down ticket losses on Kilgore and President Bush. Their solution is to get rid of the RINOs—Republicans with whom they don’t agree. Some extreme ideologues have taken to attacking Republican elected officials like Senator Devolites –Davis and others in the Press. These individuals give all Republicans a bad name. They should be repudiated! To those who hold such views, I say it is time to touch base with reality. The reality that counts is that which is in the minds of the voters. Those who justify their intransigence on the basis of their strict adherence to “conservative principles” need to realize that political success is the result of understanding what the voters need/want and finding ways to provide it to them. Purging the party of non-true-believers, staying home or forming another political party is a recipe for failure.

Conservatives assume that the Republican Party is conservative. But the Party of Lincoln has stood for many things at different times; from abolition of slavery to environmentalism under Teddy Roosevelt and anti-communism. The Republican Party and conservatism must now be self-corrected by prudence, reality and the need to relate better to the voters. Our issues need reframing and our candidates need to be of higher quality. The voters told us we have image, message, candidate and organization problems.

For our government and political parties to work, a stable consensus is required, not power and domination by an ideological elite. Our party must produce candidates who can gain broad based support from an increasingly diverse electorate. These candidates must be articulate and offer real solutions to our priority problems. We can’t continue to place ideology over competence and ignore the views of the majority of the voters. The only conclusion that should be drawn from our recent experience is that moderate and more extreme Republicans and conservatives need each other and that which divides them needs to be resolved or at least the issue positions that are taken need to be reframed to accommodate a much broader group of supporters. If the party continues to move to the right in a battle for intra-party control and power, it will only continue to lose elections and the ability to influence public policy. Our leverage is in the future not the past. The party with a strong vision for the future and sound ideas will form a majority and hold it until they lose control of that vision and stop offering solid problem-solving ideas. I believe that Republicans are in danger of losing their vision, their ideas and their control.


Larry Krakover

Culture of Corruption

Thank you Mrs. “face-lift” of America Peolsi for that sound bite that aptly describes the mess at Fannie Mae, for which that organization will pay a record fine of $400 million. According to a Washington Post article, “Examining Fannie Mae” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301751.html, executives at the shareholder owned, but quasi government operation that was set up to handle mortgages and facilitate the American housing industry “...allegedly rearranged the math,...even after accounting problems were found” to continue paying themselves the big bonuses and stock options previous managers had gotten. Despite a warning from then Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, who warned in testimony before Congress that “a sudden meltdown...could bring financial markets [down] with it,” and a multi-year haranguing by the Wall Street Journal, the top executives used their political clout, which the Post calls “one of the most sophisticated political machines” to “fend off closer regulation.”
A graph in the article titled ‘An Uncanny Coincidence’ shows that “...Fannie Mae’s reported earnings per share closely tracked the targets set for executives to receive maximum bonus payouts.” Another graph displays who got what. The teeny tiny black bit at the bottom represents their base salary—the remainder of the bar their options and bonuses. The biggest slice went to Franklin D, Raines, Chairman, chief executive officer and vice chair from 1998-2004, when he was forced to resign as the investigation proceeded, despite his best efforts to squash it. It looks as though his base salary was a couple hundred thousand, but the total payoff amounted to $24.2 million. Investigators said, “...those bonuses played a key role in the $10.6 billion accounting scandal...”
So just who are these people and how did they manage this three year rip-off? First the how. James A. Johnson, the former CEO and former aide to Walter Mondale, set up satellite offices throughout the country in order to be closer to where their business was being done. This arrangement could have been modeled after the way the Defense Department handles their big military contracts. In order to insure that they will continue, sub-contracts are let in every congressional district giving every national politician a stake in the success of the program. These satellite offices also served two other functions. They were early warning systems of possible criticism and they were effective as lobbying tools. “When [they] got wind in late 1998 about an idea among some Clinton staff members to require the company to pay to register its securities,” the company mobilized local officials who deluged the White House with protest calls. The matter was dropped. Mr. Johnson left the organization in 1999. The alleged illegal activity apparently took place after his departure and he is not accused of being involved.
Now, most importantly, the who. Mr. Johnson hired several people from the Reagan administration to handle publicity and lobbying. Robert Zoellick was executive vice president for affordable housing and left in 1997. Duane Duncan, who is currently the director of government and industry relations, was chief of staff to Republican Representative Richard Baker of Louisiana. According to the Post, Rep. Baker is Fannie Mae’s chief critic in the House. Can you say inside information?
Franklin D. Raines worked in the Carter administration and was the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration. That’s right-he handled the nation’s budget. YIKES!
Jamie Gorelick, vice chair for operations resigned in 2003. Now here’s a familiar name. When Ms Gorelick was the Inspector General at DOD she was, in the words of my Favorite Veteran (FV), universally hated. He said, “She didn’t listen.” From there she went to the number two position at Justice, where her most famous accomplishment was authoring the rule forbidding contact between intelligence gathering operations and FBI investigations. This turned out to be one of the main obstacles to dot connecting leading up to 9/11. She wasn’t listening to warnings regarding terrorism. She next appeared on the 9/11 Commission, part of whose job was to protect Ms. Gorelick from mean ole Attorney General John Ashcroft, who testified about that rule and its deleterious affects on national security. Now she, along with other Fannie Mae officers are going to be required to give back some of their ill-gotten bonus gains. Apparently, she wasn’t listening there either.
Others were profiled in the Post, but one of the more interesting is Walter Hubbell, who is currently a Senior Business analyst. He is a former intern in the Clinton administration, and wonderfully, the son of ex-con, ex Clinton Attorney General Web Hubbell.
The same edition of the Post has an article about the Enron case. Certainly if Ken Lay goes to jail, then so should the folks who were in on this scam. You can feel sympathy for people who invested and lost all their money with Enron, but at bottom the decision to do so was theirs. If Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or their sister Sallie were to fail, the U.S. tax payer would be on the hook. We who had no responsibility for the mess would have no recourse but to pay. It would be a debacle that would make the savings and loan thing in the late eighties look like child’s play.
I cannot say I am surprised by all this. Two things I learned traveling around the world substitute teaching was that the character of an organization comes from the top, and the top normally hires like-minded personnel. I knew the day I walked into one school and the Principal and the Vice Principal were actually having a fistfight in the office, I was in for a bad day. Similarly, the nation was warned during the ’92 campaign, what with bimbo-alerts and promises of universal health care while failing to mention that federal taxes would have to be doubled. But, we collectively decided to take a vacation from history and hire a group of people who believed and still believe that the ends justify the means; that anything goes to stay in power. The ends at Fannie Mae wasn’t mortgage facilitation it was big bucks for the big guys. We should all be thankful to those who persisted in looking into this before those Clintonista means did us all in ---again. And oh yes, thanks again to Ms Pelosi who was so close to the Clinton administration we have to believe she knows what she’s talking about.

To Blog Or Not To Blog

That is the question! Some dismiss the whole trend as irrelevant to themselves and to modern politics. I am here to say these people are wrong. I am certainly not posing myself as an expert. As many of you know I got into this serendipitously, and because of that fact, my arguments have not always been that cogent. But, last night, while trolling through C-Span, I found the answer and an exposition of the power of blogs.
Book TV is at a book fair and interviewing various publishers and authors. I caught the interview with Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the originator in May 2002 of http://www.dailykos.com/ and the author of a new book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots and the Rise of People Powered Politics. This blog gets between 600,000 and one million hits per day (it is even rated by Nielsen) and therefore, is a virtual community of like-minded political junkies. Some of these junkies, importantly without the participation of Mr. Zuniga, have organized a convention in Las Vegas this June to which they have invited various Democrat politicians. The invitees are going to attend and so are 1,500 readers of the Daily Kos. In effect, these people, whose connection began on a blog, have set up a political convention, outside the establishment. When asked if the Kos intends to affect the selection process or let it play out then influence the issues discussed, Mr. Zuniga replied, “the selection.” He will be the keynote speaker. Other speakers will include Virginia’s ex-governor, Mark Warner; retired and ex-Presidential candidate, Wesley Clark; Iowa governor, Tom Vilsak; and DNC Chairman, Howard Dean.
The Kos community, along with http://www.moveon.org/ and other blogs, are changing the face of politics in America. These groups are fed up with Washington Democrats, who they see as ineffective and wrong on the issues. Hillary Clinton is in this group-they do not like her (OK, we agree on something!). Their hero is Howard Dean, who jump started this movement in the 2004 Democrat primaries with his ability to tap the internet for volunteers and money and who is creating a huge controversy within his party. “Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (Rahm Emmanuel) have clashed angrily in recent days in a dispute about how the party should spend its money in advance of this fall's midterm elections,” according to an article in the Washington Post.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/10/AR2006051001927.html “...Dean and many state party chairmen...believe that the party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up...Dean has maintained that the party cannot strengthen itself over the long haul unless it competes everywhere.” The article was about an apparently violent and expletive deleted argument between Mr. Dean and Mr. Emmanuel over how to spend party funds. Mr. Emmanuel wants the money now to fund a Democrat take-over of the House of Representatives. Mr. Dean is looking toward the future. In subverting the entire Democrat Party establishment, Mr. Dean has probably taken the right road. It would be foolish of Republicans to believe that this does not affect them, as at the least, it will make the elephant look like a dinosaur to tomorrow’s voters.
The statement made by Mr. Zuniga during the interview that caught my attention had to do with how he says he became a Democrat. He says he spent three years in the Army during Desert Storm and was impressed with the communal structure of that organization that is designed to meet a common goal. He thinks all society should operate like this. This is not only antithetical to conservative values; it is really subversive for a free, democratic and capitalist society. After all, a military is dealing daily with issues of life and death, security and intelligence. In addition, every wholly socialist society has either failed outright, or at a minimum, has left the majority of its citizens behind. Mr. Zuniga says he is for opportunity and against the selfish conservative and capitalistic idea of individualism. Yet, the destruction of self-interest in socialist societies has always limited opportunities to the elite and never afforded it to the masses. Cuba may have universal health care (unless of course you are of African descent), but masses of Cubans have no job opportunities and cannot even afford new shoes. The Danny Glovers and the Harry Belafontes of this world, who have plenty of resources and who are not among the left-behind, find these ideas irresistible.
For a dose of some opposition thinking you can go to http://www.instapundit.com/, a blog begun by Glenn Reynolds in 2001. Unlike the daily Kos, Instapundit is not politically partisan, but it does espouse more conservative, often libertarian views. Mr. Reynolds has also written a book, Media, An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths. This is more in tune with American society For a history of blogs you can go to http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/pdf/Public_Affairs/ylr50-2/Reynolds.pdf. In addition there is http://http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/, and those guys in jamies who brought down the mightly Dan Rather. It is a good idea to get some idea of how these blog creatures work in order to maximize their effectiveness for a specific purpose and of course it is always a good idea to know what the opposition is saying. Several printed publications, such as National Review have blogs, but again they are not conducting partisan grassroots operations, and this is what I am looking for and what the GOP needs.









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My apologies with a Poem

The editor of this blog had a mishap last week, namely a broken right leg. Unfortunately, some things that should have gotten done did not, and I apologise. The following is a thoughtful poem printed in today's Wall Stereet Journal by Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 among other books. America
By Ray Bradbury
We are the dream that other people dream.
The land where other people land
When late at night
They think on flight
And, flying here arrive
Where we fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see
We be what all the world would like to be.
Because we hive within this scheme
The obvious dream is blind to us.
We do not mind the miracle we are,
So stop our mouths with curses.
While all the world rehearses
Coming here to stay.
We busily make plans to go away.

How dumb! newcomers cry, arrived from Chad.
You’re mad! Iraqis shout,
We’d sell our souls if we could be you.
How come you cannot see the way we see you?
You tread a freedom forest as you please.
But, damn! You miss the forest for the trees.
Ten thousand wanderers a week
Engulf your shore,
You wonder what their shouting’s for,
And why so glad?

Run warm those souls: America is bad?
Sit down, stare in their faces, see!
You be the hoped-for thing a hopeless world would be.
In tides of immigrants that this year flow
You still remain the beckoning hearth they’d know.
In midnight beds with blueprint, plan and scheme
You are the dream that other people dream.

Black is Beautiful

For the first time in history three black Americans are running for state wide office. If that isn’t enough, they’re all Republicans. This is so big even the Washington Post noted it and placed it on the front page. Ken Blackwell, current Ohio Secretary of State is running for Governor; Maryland’s Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele is running to fill a vacant Senate seat; and Pittsburgh Steeler great Lynn Swann is running for Governor of Pennsylvania. “Together, they embody a new chapter in the Republican Party’s often-failed efforts to appeal to African Americans, a strategy shaped by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman,” according to a Post article titled “The Year of the Black Republican?"

Mehlman says, “We’ve gone from a model of outreach to a model of inclusion...Outreach is a top-down approach. Inclusion says, ‘Let’s find some really good people and encourage them to run for office’.”

Of course the Post points out their individual failings: Swann has no experience, Blackwell is-horrors-both a fiscal and a social conservative, and Steele is running in a state with a 28% black vote that is not friendly to Republicans. I thought the point of the civil rights movement was to get blacks a seat at the table. One of Steele’s campaign themes is to go that goal one better. He says blacks have gotten that seat at the lunch counter; he wants them to own the restaurant. Apparently liberals do not believe that message will resonate in Maryland.
Steele has already been attacked verbally, physically, and electronically. One of the staffers for the Democrat Senate Committee headed up by New York Senator Chuck Shumer hacked into Lt. Governor Steele’s financial records by stealing his identity. The said staffer was given community service for that felony. In addition he’s been called names we all thought had been banned from the English language and had oreo cookies thrown at him. All of this is going to make this year’s elections very interesting to watch. Will the party that boasts it is the party for minority parity going to resort to the very tactics it has falsely accused Republicans of using for the last 60 years, or will they actually engage on the issues. Considering their tactics so far, it doesn’t look promising.
Both Ken Blackwell and Lynn Swann are running on traditional Republican themes of lower taxes, less government inference in everyday life and both are doing so in states with slowed or at least slowing economies. Admittedly, it is the Republicans who have had charge of Ohio, which makes Mr. Blackwell’s job that much more difficult.
My Favorite Political Scientist (FSP), who lives in Philadelphia, says the Democrat incumbent, Ed Rendell, will win reelection even if he doesn’t win. FSP has some experience with Pennsylvania Democrat Party operations. In the 2004 elections he complained that several large union men who were inside the poll wearing Kerry stickers, handing out Kerry literature, and asking people after they voted for whom they had cast their ballots were breaking the law. One said to FPS, “How’d you like to have your face rearranged?” FPS replied “Make my day,” and called the police. (Despite his honored degree in Political Science from Penn sometimes FPS isn’t that smart) This kind of behavior combined with polls located in private homes, a Rendell canvassing of the state prison system for votes and out right ballot stuffing, will make it very difficult to pry the levers of power from the Democrat.
Nevertheless, it is a good thing the Republican Party has discovered that Black is Beautiful and this brings us to the “I’m not running, I want to be the football commissioner” Condoleezza Rice. There was a draft Condi movement at the Republican conference held earlier this year in Tennessee. There’s a web site dedicated to her candidacy (http://www.rice2008.com/). And, there’s the Dick Morris book Condi vs Hillary in which he posits that Condi is the only Republican candidate who can stop Hillary, a highly preferable outcome for 08. And, after all, she is Black and she is Beautiful.

Hoodwinked

My favorite political scientist (FPS) believes the public is being hoodwinked on the immigration issue--by both sides. He fears that whatever solution comes out of this debate it will be detrimental to the future of this country because each side is conveniently sidestepping some critical element in order to make their argument more emotionally pleasing. And make no mistake, emotions, which can never settle a dispute with any clarity, are the dominant feature of this argument.
The media theme has been immigration is a GOP problem that is splitting the party. But, if my Democrat neighbors and friends are any indication of the grass roots of that party, the media has either missed the story or are deliberately not commenting on the fact that many Democrats are as rabidly against illegal immigration as anyone in the Republican Party. The May 1st declaration of "Rights" at the immigration protest rallies (held not coincidentally on the traditional Communist day of celebration), prompted one of my friends to say, spittingly, "They have no rights!" Another friend was really offended by the "today we march, tomorrow we vote," even though it is her fearless leader, Howard Dean http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060505/NEWS02/605050476&SearchID=73243946759897 who is challenging laws requiring voter ID cards that prove citizenship eligibility in Georgia and Indiana. This person also said something very interesting. She figures she should be on the "liberal" side of the issue, though she admitted she has no idea what that is, because as a card carrying Bush hater she should be opposed to whatever he advocates. However, she simply cannot stand the thought of the country being overrun by voting illegals, which puts her right in sync with the KKK marching in Georgia for the same reason.
The one area of some agreement is controlling the border. FPS, with many on the right, believes we should build a wall: close down the southern border as much as possible. Immigrant advocates will pay lip service to this idea until they are asked to specify what they mean, which is usually not doing anything differently than is done now. The main argument for this procedure is that if we have 20 million now, surely in another decade we’ll have twice that number. What those on the right who want every illegal deported ignore is that this is not going to happen. America is not going to watch a nightly news parade of young U.S. born children being deported to someplace they’ve never been and where they do not even speak the language; or having these same children dumped on the social welfare system when their parents are deported.
Many on the right also ignore the demographic situation playing out here and throughout the West, where a declining birth rate smacks right up against a rapidly rising retirement rate that is going to demand more resources than will possibly be available. Though the U.S. has less of a problem than Europe because we have a higher birth rate, we are still very sure we do not want a French economy with nearly 30% unemployment in some sectors-not to mention all those burning cars. Above all we cannot allow this argument to turn into a fight against all immigration. Some argue that we should increase the number of H1B visas for high tech and highly educated people, because importing illiteracy and poverty will only exacerbate our demographic problem.

Howard Dean, so impressed with the “protests,” says his party will ride this issue into the impeachment of Bush and to the White House in 08 if not before. But, there are some things he’s just not taking into consideration. First, assimilation. This is what has made America successful, and as we watch the ethnic unrest throughout Europe, we understand this is what Europeans have not learned to do. Newt Gingrich takes this up in his latest book Winning the Future, arguing that to qualify for citizenship every person must learn enough English to pass a test on American history and values.
The question about many of the illegals is, do they want to assimilate! On the front page of the Post today, “Vibrant Village Quieted as Salvadorans Go North”http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/registration/manage&destination=password&nextstep=update tell s the story of one village from which most working age people have immigrated to the U.S. These immigrants support those left by sending a portion of their wages home. A significant part of the GNP of Mexico, over 20 billion dollars annually, is derived from this same source. Whereas earlier waves of immigrants to this country came to become Americans, that is a doubtful proposition with those here today. Even if individuals would protest this, they are drowned out by those on the far left who believe that the southwestern part of this country is a place called Aslan: a place that rightly belongs to Mexico and that needs to be repatriated. Just last week students at Montibello High School near Whittier California flew the Mexican flag on top of an upside down U.S. flag prompting massive protest on the internet. This behavior is encouraged by the leftists in Mexico, which will probably dominate the government after elections there this summer.
In this debate neither side listens to the other and instead of looking for solutions, spends all the time pointing fingers at the opposition. FPS believes building a wall is just the beginning. He agrees no one should have the privilege of citizenship without speaking the language and having an understanding of our history and form of government. He also agrees there should be a penalty for having broken the law by entering the country illegally in the form of a $5,000 fine. Now this is where FPS gets controversial. He thinks we should pull investment out of Europe and put it into infrastructure and business in Central and South America as our natural allies and business partners.
Though many current immigrants may not want to assimilate, for the most part their aims are peaceful-they’re not here to blow things up, but rather to earn a decent living for themselves and their families. One of the great ironies of this whole debate is what is happening in New Orleans. While Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, NBC’s Brian Williams, and the local politicians obsess about the poor blacks from the lower ninth ward who are not moving back to that hell-hole that provided them with no education, no opportunity, and no dignity (and why should they?), the people cleaning up there are immigrants from all over this country who piled into car pools and made their way to the disaster area in order to find work. These people echo one of the lines from the movie United 93. “No one is going to help us. We’ve got to do it ourselves.” That’s about as American as it gets.
That this issue is complicated goes without saying. The sad thing is that those who are genuinely looking not only for just answers, but for solutions that will spell progress for America in the future are taking this biggest hit. Number one is the President. He has been talking about this issue since 1995 and he has experience dealing with it both as the Texas Governor and in his present capacity. Both FPS and I agree with most of Mr. Bush’s proposals, but as long as we have demagogues involved in the discussion such as Howard Dean, Hugo Chaves (who funded parts of the protests), and the KKK there’s little hope of that. In the meantime, we may just be hoodwinking ourselves.

Irony Unbound

The supreme irony wrapped up in the demonstrations last weekend held to compel U.S. intervention in Sudan and the May Day celebrations hoping to compel amnesty and citizenship for millions of Mexicans is almost too much to bear. Though the Washington Post in an article titled "Divisions Cast Aside in Cry for Darfur" maintains that the 10,000 who marched in Washington cut across party, ethnic and ideological lines, nevertheless, the organizers and many of the speakers were fierce and virulent Democrat opponents of President Bush and this administration. I happened to tune in when House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi was speaking. Here's a woman who not only wants to impeach the commander in chief during a war, but wants the U.S. to get out of Iraq ASAP, apparently, in order to have troops available to invade Sudan. And yet, it was the Bush team that negotiated a cease fire when the African Christians were the targets. Now we have Muslims slaughtering Muslims abetted by the Chinese who desperately need Sudanese oil. In an op. ed. in the Post on Sunday Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “League of Dictators?” made the case that Iran and Sudan are in some measure extensions of the 20th century conflict between free people and dictators. In that sense, just like the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, any action in Sudan is taking on China by proxy. I don't recall this nuance being discussed or even mentioned at the rally, but it is for sure a complicating factor. And, any intervention would surely invite some kind of reaction beyond Sudan. In addition, I cannot recall Ms Pelosi or any of her comrades having the same sympathy for those buried in the mass graves in Iraq. Do these people have some sort of secret criteria for sympathy and compassion that the rest of us just do not understand. Fast forward to Monday and many of the same people are marching or supporting the march of people who are in this country illegally. Between the Mexican flags and derogatory signs of the first marches, the rewriting of the National Anthem, the protests by Mexican unionists in Mexico City in support of illegals here, these people have turned a person, namely me, who was inclined to support the establishment of a immigrant worker program into a borderline fierce opponent of anything except securing the border. For once I seem to be in sync with the majority of Americans as most polls reflect this reality. But, once again Howard Dean has missed the boat. He's on the side of the marchers and he believes this will get him control of Congress and through that the ability to overturn the last election. The problem for Mr. Dean is his compadres in this matter. Number one is La Raza, a branch of which is not just after legalization, but secession of most of the western part of this country back to Mexico. La Raza receives several million dollars from U.S. taxpayers--I would like to know where that money goes and who votes for those appropriations. Number two is Hugo Chavez who is apparently helping with the funding and publicity for the marches. And number three is the likely next President of Mexico, the socialist anti-American Mayor of Mexico City, who has already declared that he will ally with Chavez. These people all have interests directly in opposition to those of this country and Howard Dean and his Democrat allies fit right (or should I say left) in with that agenda.