I am really incensed about this whole Linda Chavez brouhaha. Does anybody else remember, when Clinton was trying to appoint someone (maybe Lani Guinier?) and it turned out the woman had hired illegal aliens on a regular basis?
And among the democrats a cry and a hue arose, shouts of “Disgusting!” and “Petty partisanship”, claims of irrelevancy, putting of thumbs on noses and going *phhthththbpbpbpbp".
What the fuck is going on? Does the democratic party realize that it’s coming across as the anti-immigrant screw-em we’re-going-to-use-the-letter-of-the-law-to-BEAT-you-down! party?
Of course you can argue the same thing against the Republican party, for playing the :Partanship: card repeatedly over Clinton, from 1993 onward and act shocked when the Democrats finds the same book.
“Most of the American people were upset during the Zoe Baird nomination that she had hired an illegal alien.” --Linda Chavez.
Oh come on jb, either pay attention or quit your whining. First of all, your post in unintelligible. Are you or aren’t you saying that “loyal democrats” were complaining? Second of all, can can you say “the media” didn’t “complain” when you wouldn’t know about this story if you hadn’t heard it through the media.
What you remember involved Zoe Baird, not Guanier, and she withdrew. Chavez, incredibly, was one of the people who publicly criticized her. More important, Chavez withdrew b/c Bush and co. were furious with her for not having been up front with them about this. It was her decision and theirs not to proceed with something that was going to make them look like hypocrites. I’d focus my dismay on something a little less predictable if I were you.
Why aren’t you also then complaining about Bush’s very pronounced lack of public (and according to Linda, private) support after it became clear she lied to the vetting committee? She says it’s because they didn’t ask her about the specific situation.(Sound familiar?). Do you really believe they didn’t end the session along the lines of Now, is there anything, anything at all…
By the way, have you gone over Mercado’s history? Chavez didn’t help her establish life in the land of the free and home of the brave. She ended up going back to Guatemala after about a year. Several years later she returned (no contact with Chavez)and eventually gained her citizenship through marriage.
Maybe we should be complaining that not only did Chavez break the law, but still didn’t accomplish her alleged goal.
Oooh, I was just coming in here to say, “Doesn’t anyone else remember Nannygate?”
I dunno, JB, I think it’s just how the game is played. The Republicans had an opportunity to go “nyah, nyah!” at Clinton, and now it’s the Democrats’ turn.
What I find amazing about the Chavez Affair is how dumb she was, to do it in the first place. She must have known that this was bound to jump up and bite her on the kneecap sooner or later. Did she just think that no one would care? Did she think she’d be able to talk her way out of it, or somehow make people believe it was really OK?
Was she really so unambitious back then that it never occurred to her, “Oh, I might someday move far enough up the political ladder so that people are going to be scrutinizing my life, I’d better be careful here.”
I think she just didn’t stop to think about it, that she just made the quick and convenient decision at the time. She needed housework done right then, and what might happen ten years or so down the road simply never crossed her mind.
Speaking for myself, I don’t want any MORE people who “don’t stop to think”, who just “make the convenient decision”, holding high office in our land.
Rather than castigate her for it, I think it was commendable that she did not stop and ask “how will this affect my political career?”, before reaching out to help a fellow human being. It was stupid of her not to admit that she knew the woman was an illegal alien.
The truth is I don’t see Chavez as being a hypocrite for hiring Guatamalan slave labor. It fits right in with her ideology. The difference between her and Zoe Baird is that she’s a conservative that thinks it fine for companies to force their employees to work long hours for little pay. Zoe Baird was a member of the party that holds a different opinion. Shame on you Zoe, you didn’t deserve to hold a cabinet post either. And if you think any of this isn’t about ideology then you’re just deluding yourself, that’s what it’s all about.
What gets me about all of these people is the greed! All of them are certainly financially capable of hiring someone legally and paying them a decent wage to do their damned nasty housework. Where do these people get off!? So what if some owner of a tiny cafe’ in some backwater town hires an illegal to do his dishes. In some ways that might be justified because he’s only slightly better off than the illegal. But these people have plenty of money to do things the right way. Not to mention the fact that they are in the public eye and subject to scrutiny. Chavez does not deserve to hold this cabinet post because if nothing else she’s just plain stupid. But she’s only a hypocrite because she ran her big mouth about Baird. And yeah, I buy the humanitarian excuse, her politics alone tell you just how humanitarian she is.
The truth is I don’t see Chavez as being a hypocrite for hiring Guatamalan slave labor. It fits right in with her ideology. The difference between her and Zoe Baird is that she’s a conservative that thinks it’s fine for companies to force their employees to work long hours for little pay. Zoe Baird was a member of the party that holds a different opinion. Shame on you Zoe, you didn’t deserve to hold a cabinet post either. And if you think any of this isn’t about ideology then you’re just deluding yourself, that’s what it’s all about.
What gets me about all of these people is the greed! All of them are certainly financially capable of hiring someone legally and paying them a decent wage to do their damned nasty housework. Where do these people get off!? So what if some owner of a tiny cafe’ in some backwater town hires an illegal to do his dishes. In some ways that might be justified because he’s only slightly better off than the illegal. But these people have plenty of money to do things the right way. Not to mention the fact that they are in the public eye and subject to scrutiny. Chavez does not deserve to hold this cabinet post because if nothing else she’s just plain stupid. But she’s only a hypocrite because she ran her big mouth about Baird. And yeah, I buy the humanitarian excuse, her politics alone tell you just how humanitarian she is.
Just like this new witch, Elain Chao, so what if your father worked three jobs. I don’t give a shit. What are you trying to say here that us “working class” folks are two jobs shy of being worthy of decent representation? The woman is married to Mitch McConnell, Mr. Big Business Interests himself. I’m sure she’ll represent Bush’s adgenda just as well as Chavez.
I agree that Chavez is being true to her ideology. However, the woman in question was not an employee of Chavez. Chavez’s ideology is that private citizens often can do a better job than the government. So she saw a battered woman who needed help and provided the help. If she saw the woman in need and then lobbied the government to create a program to help battered Ecuadorians that would have been counter to her ideology.
she was nominated for Secretary of LABOR, but APPEARED to have entered into an informal agreement to pay someone “off the books.”
She misled the Bush transition team, and possibly the FBI.
She was publicly revealed as a hypocrite due to her swipe at Zoe Baird for extremely similar conduct.
That said, the appalling thing is that none of you seem to see what’s really at issue here: we have a law that makes it a CRIME to shelter a fellow human being escaping from torture (even if it takes the form of domestic violence, like that means the broken bones and cuts and burns and sense of helplessness hurt less somehow) just because the person in question, running for her life, could not wait months or years to obtain a U.S. visa.
Speaking as someone who’s worked on a number of political asylum cases, I have to say that once you have a refugee living with you (legally in my case), that person’s sense of worth and self-confidence is often rebuilt by occasionally helping out with the domestic workload. People trying to regain their sense of autonomy don’t like to feel like objects of pity. For Pete’s sakes, you never helped wash the dishes after a dinner with friends? Staying with your relatives, you never took out the garbage? I believe what Chavez said: she didn’t hire her as an employee and didn’t pay her “wages.” But the INS, in its rabidly nasty way, can’t see any pattern here but “illegal immigrant labor” and that’s primarily the fault of chauvinistic right-wingers who can’t conceive of ordinary human motives like charity and helpfulness being involved when Americans want to help non-citizens. Meanwhile, LEGAL immigrants toiling in actual sweatshops are terrified to complain because their employers threaten them with the INS, and since you can’t get any kind of due process once the INS has you in custody, that threat means disaster.
Ms. Chavez did a thoroughly human and moral thing. The sad part is that we have laws that make it criminal. The shameful part is neither Republicans nor Democrats can see the ethical issues involved here: they’re both too busy playing “gotcha!” to think about the reasons why people must flee their native countries and what would be a fair and reasonable way to treat them when they wind up here.
Oh, please! Let’s give Linda Chavez a medal for paying a woman $130 bucks now and then for cleaning her toilets and walking her dogs. And let’s give the neighbor a medal for being in on the deal. In fact, let’s canonize everyone in the state of California who hires an illegal Mexican to do their gardening and childcare on the grounds of their “thoroughly human and moral principles.” Your naivite astounds me! If Linda Chavez were a humanitarian rather than a typical homeowner with a toilet to clean on the cheap she’d have engaged legal services for Mercado immediately so as to legalize the relation. With her professional background, she knew how to do the charitable thing in a legal way. Instead, as another poster pointed out, she didn’t even bother to see through the process through.
As to the ideological differences between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, wrong, Wrong, and WRONG. Conservatives hail themselves as law and order, remember? True, they don’t want government to interfere in labor relations to (for example) maintain a minimum wage, assure safe working conditions, etc. But is that a boon to immigrants? Liberal Democrats, I think you will find, are far more in favor of easing immigration laws, offering amnesty to illegal immigrants and offering social benefits to recent immigrants to improve their quality of life once they are here. The conservative position isn’t to have more immigrants; though it implicitly fosters illegal situations like Chavez’s. The conservative position is to let the market rule: so if you’ve got people, illegal or otherwise, working in sweatshop conditions, that’s okay, even though it’s inhumane for them and drags down the whole of the US labor force.
I don’t actually remember the details of the Zoe Baird case. Was the Nanny an immigrant? I’m almost positive she was not an illegal alien. Was the issue that Baird had paid subhuman wages or just that she had not paid social security taxes? In any case, even if it was just the latter, it brought her down. I didn’t complain at the time, as I recognize that political appointees have to be squeaky clean in this and other ways.
I would go as far as to agree with you that it’s hypocritical of both parties not to recognize how much the entire middle and upper class in the US relies on cheap and often illegal immigrant domestic labor. But I will go down to the mat with you on whether that problem isn’t exacerbated more by the Republican position than the liberal Democrat.
Freedom2, I hereby appoint you as my proofreader. And if you’re lucky I’ll let you clean my toilets while you’re at it
I will state again…Humanitarian my ass! Political asylumn my big fat patootie! “House guests” don’t stay two years! I don’t know about you but a week is about all I can take even having the most polite and appreciative house guest staying with me. Give us all a break please! Of course the Repubs are willing to buy that shit they voted for Bush in the first place.
Employment situations are characterized by, for example:
Regular, or at least fixed, hours.
Stated, even if low, wages.
An explicit agreement between the parties “I want the job.” “Okay, you’re hired.”
Both Ms. Chavez and the woman she sheltered said that the household help was occasional and voluntary; neither characterized the occasional sums given by Ms. Chavez as “wages” or “pay.”
Of course, there are plenty of people hiring illegal immigrants at low wages. I’m just saying that, in this case, that’s not what happened.
You suggest that it would have been possible to “legalize” the status of Ms. Chavez’s houseguest. Unfortunately, at the time, the INS had refused to recognize domestic abuse as “persecution . . . . on account of . . . .membership in a particular social group.” So, no asylum, and revealing her status would have made her immediately deportable right back to her abusive husband.
Actually, I am in agreement with you that the Democrats are more favorably inclined to reasonable, just, and merciful immigration laws. My post was merely meant to protest the fact that in both the Baird and Chavez cases, each party chose to ignore the viewpoints and needs of the non-citizens involved, and simply score political points off the other.
Employment situations are characterized by, for example:
Regular, or at least fixed, hours.
Stated, even if low, wages.
An explicit agreement between the parties “I want the job.” “Okay, you’re hired.”
Both Ms. Chavez and the woman she sheltered said that the household help was occasional and voluntary; neither characterized the occasional sums given by Ms. Chavez as “wages” or “pay.”
Of course, there are plenty of people hiring illegal immigrants at low wages. I’m just saying that, in this case, that’s not what happened.
You suggest that it would have been possible to “legalize” the status of Ms. Chavez’s houseguest. Unfortunately, at the time, the INS had refused to recognize domestic abuse as “persecution . . . . on account of . . . .membership in a particular social group.” So, no asylum, and revealing her status would have made her immediately deportable right back to her abusive husband.
Actually, I am in agreement with you that the Democrats are more favorably inclined to reasonable, just, and merciful immigration laws. My post was merely meant to protest the fact that in both the Baird and Chavez cases, each party chose to ignore the viewpoints and needs of the non-citizens involved, and simply score political points off the other.
AuntPam…all good points and well put…but you don’t actually BELIEVE that Chavez took this woman in for humanitarian purposes do you? I really don’t care what they are saying…the problem is that what they are saying seems so obviously ridiculous that even the most naieve and charitable person should at least have doubts about their story.
And I couldn’t agree more about political asylumn and the deplorable problem of exploiting illegal immigrants. I just don’t think Chavez has a humanitarian bone in her body.
What basis do you have of accusing Chavez of this. She has a history of taking in people with personal problems. She has taken in Vietnamese boat people before and helped out other poor people. Here is a link to an article written about her by a friend who has personal knowledge of the situation. http://www.nationalreview.com/daily/nr010801.shtml
If she really wants to help poor people then she will stop telling women who are sexually exploited by their bosses that they are “crybabies”. If she really wants to help poor people she will change her tune about forced overtime, Affirmative Action, and women in the workforce. Her actions do not jibe with her ideologies if she is such a damned humanitarian. I have been thinking about calling her up in the Fall when my employer starts laying us all off. Maybe she’ll let me and my son move in for a couple of years. He can walk the dog and I can cook and scrub her floors. At least we’re in the country legally.
This sounds as though it was an exploitative relationship, with substandard wages being paid by Chavez. She didn’t handle the situation properly (illegally, in all likelihood), tried to cover it up and looked like a thorough and sanctimonious hypocrite with her “look upon my marvelous works” parting news conference.
Goodbye, Linda.
Console yourself with the fact that the pundits didn’t give you hell about your excessive makeup.
