Among other subjects, Joe discusses Giuliani’s immigration deceit , the GOP’s suicide mission on immigration and why the MSM’s failure to report honestly on illegal immigration helps us. Listen here.

It dawns on Matthew Yglesias that if border enforcement succeeded in driving up wages for the unskilled, some jobs wouldn’t be economical to do anymore. But, he doesn’t go far enough:

An early scene in “The Man Who Would Be King” takes place in the office of an English colonial administrator in India. To stay cool, he had a big fan over his head flapped by a servant via a string attached to the sitting servant’s toe. That’s pretty awesome! If wages weren’t so damn high here in America, I could have my own Untouchable toe-fanning servant too, instead of having to use my boring, totally unawesome electric fan. I could impress all my friends. (Well, maybe not the friends I already have, but if I had enough servants, I could assign some of them to get me new friends who would be impressed.)

Think of all the other hundreds of millions of jobs that could be created in America if wages fell to 19th Century Indian levels!

Of course, I couldn’t actually afford to pay my toe-fanning flunky the full cost of what it would take for him and his family to live in America, but I believe the externalities of my servant’s cost of living should be borne by the public at large, not by me. Thus, my worker’s kids should get free schooling, the whole family should get free health care at the emergency room, his tenement should get fire and police protection, he should drive without car insurance, etc. Why shouldn’t I cost shift my conveniences on to everybody else?

Open Borders cheerleaders present people with the false dilemma of deporting 20 million illegal aliens or legalizing 20 million aliens.

Of course they don’t point out there’s another option–start enforcing the law and thus force illegals to self-deport.

Well, it appears that may be happening in my home state of Oklahoma, where a new get-tough law is set to take effect on November 1st. Reportedly, thousands of illegal aliens (called “Hispanics” in the article) have left the Tulsa area already. [Hispanics Moving Out Of Oklahoma Before New Law Takes Effect Jerry Giordano. KTUL.com, August 22, 2007 ]

Part of the new law mandates deportation of all illegal aliens who commit crimes, and Tulsa County deputies are being trained to apprehend and deport them.

Unsurprisingly, the new law is being opposed by the Tulsa Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and by homebuilders. Also, the “National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders” is planning to fight it in court.

I hope the new law takes effect and is enforced properly.

As for the fleeing illegals, they are said to be going to Arkansas and Kansas.

Today’s breaking news of Idaho’s US Senator Larry Craig being charged with and pleading guilty to lewd conduct in a Minnesota airport mens’ room follows months of my asking Northern Idaho conservatives about how last Fall’s rumors of Craig’s sexual preferences might explain his traitorous stance on amnesty for illegal aliens (he strongly supports amnesty, voted for both Senate bills, and is cosponsoring the AgJobs and DREAM Act bills, both of which include amnesty clauses).

Was Craig being blackmailed? Locals admitted that for at least two decades, unsubstantiated stories of Craig’s homosexuality had circulated, and that he had married a divorced staffer with children late in life in the face of those rumors. Will this be the final straw for potato heads who have preferred ignorance to action? Craig’s pathetic protestations today (”it’s a he said, he said” matter, his staffer claims) and Craig’s own statements that he “should have sought counsel and not pled guilty” pale in comparison to the detailed, shocking charges leveled by the arresting cop, the apparent target of Craig’s sexual advances.

Let’s hope Craig quickly resigns to spend more time with his family. Gov. Butch Otter can then appoint someone who reflects Craig’s constituents and the state legislature’s strong stance against illegal alien rights, benefits, and unwanted presence in the state.

Matt Welch usually has something interesting to say, and his new book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick , will no doubt be fascinating. (Welch believes that a President McCain would send more troops overseas–I just wish he’d save a few for the US Border.)

“Maverick,” of course, means

• totally without party loyalty
• unconcerned with the wishes of his constituents, or Americans in general
• extremely friendly with members of the conventional media–he panders to them, they pander to him, and that’s why they call him a “maverick” rather than, say, a hatemonger.

There’s only one problem, which I hope won’t hurt Welch’s sales too badly–McCain is at around 1 percent in the Presidential race. The reason? His support of the massive failed immigration bill.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece Monday with some interesting observations on Mexican wealth and inequality, a subject that should concern Americans more than it does. (For example, Bush is planning to send a robust aid package of American taxpayer dollars to help Presidente Calderon fight Mexican narco-traffickers despite the fact that Mexico has plenty of money and can well afford to pay for its own anti-drug efforts.)

Billionaire Carlos Slim recently surpassed Bill Gates as the richest man on earth, and Mexico’s monopoly-based economic system figures strongly in how Slim accumulated that wealth ($59B). But a simple dollar comparison leaves out the true scope of Slim’s vast fortune…

To put it in perspective, Mr. Slim’s treasure is equivalent to slightly less than 7 percent of Mexico’s total production of goods and services - one out of every 14 dollars’ worth of stuff made by all the people in the country.

The income distribution in the United States may be fast approaching Mexican levels of inequality, but in relative terms, Mr. Gates isn’t even in Mr. Slim’s league. His $58 billion fortune is less than 0.5 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.

Indeed, by this measure, Mr. Slim is richer even than the robber barons of the gilded age. John D. Rockefeller, America’s richest man, was worth the equivalent of about 1.5 percent of the nation’s G.D.P.
[Mexico's Plutocracy Thrives on Robber-Baron Concessions, New York Times 8/27/07]

Mexico scholar George Grayson criticized the corrupt economic system that allowed Slim’s ascent to Numero Uno:

[Slimlandia is] not a reverential term. Many Mexicans hoped privatization, which began in the early 1990s, would create competition and drive prices down drastically. That hasn’t happened. “Slim is one of a dozen fat cats in Mexico who impede that country’s growth because they run monopolies or oligopolies,” says Grayson. “The Mexican economy is highly inefficient, and it is losing its competitive standing vis-à-vis other countries because of people like Slim.” [...]

“He made his billions because of an extremely close and advantageous relationship with the Salinas government,” says professor Grayson of William & Mary.
[Carlos Slim, the richest man in the world, CNN Money 8/20/07]

An economy built on oligarchy has a lot of similarities to the growing corporatism replacing representative government in this country. Is that aspect of Mexican society more appealing to Mexichurian George Bush than even the endless supply of inexpensive labor? Bush’s plans for a North American Union may have more to do with importing Mexican business culture than cheap workers.