I’ve written a lot about immigration sob stories, in which the corrupt press unfairly focuses on the alleged suffering of illegal aliens, yet never exhibits any sympathy for Americans who are genuinely harmed by foreign workers taking jobs formerly done by citizens.

But this is the first time I’ve seen a sob story where business owners are portrayed as the aggrieved party: Businesses Face Cut in Immigrant Work Force (March 14, 2008).

HYANNIS, Mass. — For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth.

This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements.

“It’s a major crisis,” he said. “We’re very short on work force. We’ll be looking at opening a little later, closing a little earlier, looking at how we do our menus.”

Mr. Zammer is caught up in a Congressional standoff over immigration overhaul that is punishing employers who play by the rules and that, advocates of change say, could cost small companies billions in lost business.

Nowhere in the article does the writer mention that these jobs might be filled by Americans.

In fact, college students and other young people used to do those jobs, and were happy to escape the books to work seasonally at vacation spots. Then business owners discovered that foreign workers (particularly illegal ones) were more flexible, compliant and cheap.

Here’s part of Obama’s response:

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation. When these statements first came to my attention, it was at the beginning of my presidential campaign. I made it clear at the time that I strongly condemned his comments.”

Does the word “disingenuous” come to mind?

So, Obama, who wrote pp. 274-295 about Wright in his 1995 autobiography, had no idea that Wright was an anti-American leftwing crank until early 2007?

Yet, ABC reported yesterday that the “God Damn America” soundbite is from 2003:

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

We know that Obama gave $27,500 to Wright’s church in 2005-06 alone. But, maybe Obama really isn’t the regular church-goer he claims to be in all those campaign ads and speeches. But, you don’t think he ever talked to anybody who heard Rev. Dr. say these things?

C’mon, unlike Obama, Wright is an exhibitionist who likes to leave a paper (and digital) trail. And, unlike Obama, Wright likes to make himself clear.

Obama’s oratorical style is a blend of Wright’s black preacher man style with David Souter’s care not to leave a controversial paper trail.

Obama is trying to imply that Wright is going senile in his dotage, but the man is all of 66.

C’mon, Wright has always been Wright. In 1984 he went with Farrakhan to visit Gadaffi in Libya when the Colonel was the world’s leading supporter of terrorism. Wright has always been a leftwing radical and that’s a big reason that Obama chose him out of all the dozens of South Side preachers he had known in the 1980s.

The connection between Tony Rezko and the Obamas that led to their coordinated action in 2005 in purchasing a mansion and adjoining yard in Chicago is starting to come into better focus.

That’s because Rezko’s trial in Chicago is concentrating heavily on Rezko’s alleged corruption of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board in 2003-2004 (see Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times), which apparently decides who gets to build hospitals. All sorts of different politicians in Illinois were aligned with one hospital-building fixer or another. It’s “the Chicago Way.”

And, according to Wikipedia:

“In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority in the Illinois Senate.”

An email that surfaced earlier in the trial seemed to indicate, according to the NYT, that Obama “had been involved in recommending candidates for the board.”

Meanwhile, Mrs. Obama was being paid six figures by a major Chicago hospital to coordinate community outreach, or something.

We aren’t used to thinking of health care as being corrupt, but at 15% of the GDP these days, that’s where the money is (as bankrobber Willie Sutton explained in response to a question about why he robbed banks). So, it’s only natural that crooks will gravitate toward that industry.

Mexico has gotten the rep as being such a dangerous place from all the narco-murders that even blotto-drunk college students are staying away. Texas party animals are heading south to Padre Island for spring break festivities, but hardly any will be venturing further.

Students there say the real madness would be to take the traditional 30-minute trip to the Mexican border for the popular “Two-Nation Vacation.”

News of gun battles between Mexican soldiers and drug cartels in border cities are keeping tourists away and prompting many parents to dole out a stern warning: “Don’t go to Mexico.” [...]

Debra Fassold’s family has been running the Original Tours company since the 1970s. Fassold says she used to have 10 to 20 trips from South Padre Island to Matamoros, Mexico, each day. But now she says she doesn’t have enough customers for even one tour.
[Mexican Drug Wars Keep Spring Breakers From Heading South of the Border, Fox News, March 13, 2008]

Americans as a whole have gotten the message that visiting the Narco-neighbor is an unwise vacation choice. They are staying away in droves, according to Lou Dobbs Tonight (March 12)…

CASEY WIAN: The violence is decimating Mexico’s tourism industry.

Baja, California alone had nearly two million fewer foreign visitors last year. Just last week, Tijuana police seized more than 100 weapons, including gold and ivory plated assault rifles like these, 50,000 rounds of ammunition and half a ton of marijuana.

Also last week, right across the border from where I am standing, Mexican federal troops fought a seven-hour gun battle with suspected drug cartel members hiding in a wealthy neighborhood home. 30,000 Mexican federal troops have been battling the drug cartels for over a year and Lou, they seem to have barely made a dent in the drug violence.

It’s sobering that 30,000 Mexican troops haven’t made any progress against the cartels. Look forward to more blowback from the failing state headed in our general direction.

As recently as 2004, the Obama family enjoyed merely the kind of upper middle class income ($250k) that many Americans could imagine themselves making if a few breaks had gone their way. This comprehensibility of the Obama family financial situation can put them at a PR disadvantage relative to the Clintons, whose finances are evidently way, way up in the Davos Man stratosphere, as Bill jets around with Ron Burkle and the like, introducing the odd mining magnate to his close personal friend the Grand Khan of Boratstan.

For example, consider the Obama house controversy revolving around Tony Rezko purchasing the adjoining empty lot for the full asking price at the same moment the Obamas were buying their house from the same seller for $300k off the asking price. I could imagine scenarios where Rezko’s “investment” in Senator Obama ranged all the way from $0 to a few hundred thousand dollars, but my best guest would be around $70,000. (This assumes that two participants in an honest deal would have split the discount off the list price proportional to their investments. Instead, the fixer apparently let the politician have the entire discount.)

Man, wouldn’t it be nice if some old buddy of yours slipped you $70k in return for all the favors you’ve done for him and will do for him over the years? That would be great! Or wouldn’t it be awesome if your spouse got a raise of something like $150k per year, plus a signing bonus of almost $50k because you’ve now got even more power over her employer? Can you imagine all the things you could do with that kind of extra money?

Yes, I can.

So, it’s easy for me to get in a huff over the Obama’s relatively human scale corner-cutting, while Clinton-level shenanigans are just the way of the world.

I really can’t grasp the kind of money Mr. Clinton rakes in for things like giving speeches to companies whose profits are heavily dependent upon votes by Senators like, say, Mrs. Clinton, such as the $250,000 that Citigroup paid Mr. Clinton for one speech in 2004. Now, Citigroup is currently desirous of Congress voting for a massive bailout of the financial industry, but I’m sure that kind of eventuality never crossed Citigroup’s mind when hiring Mr. Clinton. Instead, they clearly must have done a cost-benefit analysis of the value of Mr. Clinton’s oratory and saw that his wisdom was indeed worth $100 per second.

A long time ago I reported to an entrepreneur who for awhile had his own jet (I am told that that’s the dividing line between the merely affluent and the really rich), but riding on it was kind of uncomfortable because the thing was so obviously hugely expensive relative to his ample but still finite net worth (for example, you have to employ two pilots full time).

So, even though I’ve been around private jet-rich people in the past, the idea of me ever being that rich just seems oppressive, with two pilots sitting around all day at the local airport drinking coffee, waiting for me to come up with some place to zoom off to where I can make enough money to keep paying them to drink coffee. Yeeesh. So, I never think about having that kind of money.

But if you are Bill Clinton, you don’t even have to bother owning a jet because zillionaires are constantly offering to lend you their private jets for free.

But I do think now and then about the 8,000 stock options I had in a company where I worked. They had a strike price of 14. I’d had them for years, but the stock was usually trading a little below $14. One day in the 1990s, I checked the stock price on a whim for the first time in months and it had gone up to 19. Wow, I should pick up the phone and cash cash them in for $40,000! But, then, I had an even better idea — I’ll just wait until the stock hits 20. A nice round number! It’ll probably get there by tomorrow. But, as I watched the computer screen, the stock slipped to 18 7/8, 18 3/4, and so on. Within a few weeks, it was underwater and never resurfaced.

$40,000. Gone.

That’s the kind of number I can dwell upon, like that $70,000 I’m guessing was Obama’s cut from Rezko.

Bill Clinton doesn’t get out of bed for $70,000.

This whole Clinton-Obama financial scandal comparison makes me feel like some poor 19th Century Russian peasant. That the czar has rooms full of rubies and diamonds is simply the natural order of things, but that my neighbor has a cow while I have none is an outrage.

My hope has long been that Barack Obama’s heart moved from the far left toward the political center sometime between his 1995 autobiography and now (perhaps after his disillusioning defeat to an ex-Black Panther in a House Democratic primary in 2000).

When Sen. Obama recently addressed Jewish leaders concerned about Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr and his outspoken admiration for Louis Farrakhan, the candidate attempted to give the impression that his pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ was old and a relic of the 1960s. (Wright is five years younger than John McCain.) But he has appeared to be extremely reluctant to spell out exactly where he disagrees with his pastor other than over his spiritual advisor’s admiration for Louis Farrakhan.

It’s hard to know what’s in a man’s heart, especially in the heart of someone as verbally gifted and cautious as the Democratic frontrunner. We do have one objective source of data, however: the Obama family’s charitable contributions according to their tax returns of 1998, 2005, and 2006.

The Obamas didn’t give a lot to charity until they hit it rich in 2005 with Barack’s book deal and Michelle’s big raise, but what’s of interest here is the pattern of donations. Was there a relative fall-off in support for Wright’s Trinity church as they matured politically and emotionally?

According to a 2007 Chicago Tribune story:

“Only a few of the tax returns released by Obama detail the recipients of his charity. In 1998, when the Obamas reported a combined household income of $191,146 and $1,100 in cash donations to charity, the biggest gift went to Trinity. It totaled $400, about 0.2 percent of their combined income.

“In 2005 they gave the church $5,000 and in 2006 it received $22,500.”

So, in two of the three years for which we have numbers (1998 and 2006), Wright’s Trinity church was the top recipient of the Obama family’s contributions. Now, 2006 really wasn’t very long ago…