is a Canadian lawyer who calls himself Pithlord. He’s read Obama’s autobiography very closely (we mostly disagree over whether there’s anything humorous in Obama’s irony — he finds it funny, I find it self-pitying and lugubrious). He sums Obama up:

At bottom, I think Obama’s basic theoretical framework is in dispute resolution. The worldview is sometimes attributed to his experience as an organizer, but it could also be that of a corporate litigator. He thinks of the world as filled with non-zero-sum games, in which the win-win alternative of making a deal and dividing the surplus isn’t taken because each side is gripped with a narrative that makes rationally self-interested compromise difficult or impossible. The intellectual problem is to look at the interests coolly and dispassionately and see where the surplus-maximizing position lies. But the harder problem is to be sensitive enough to how the identity-constituting stories keep both sides from doing that. It’s Harvard Negotiation project stuff, but it also works with who he thinks he is.

Obama doesn’t particularly claim to come from nowhere or have no loyalties. He is instinctively cosmopolitan, on-the-left and tied to his adopted black American Protestant identity. But I think he recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people’s loyalties are, “recognize” them and then figure out how to get to the best possible resolution of the bargaining problem they represent.

Obama loves to put things dialectically. In this, the successful politician he most resembles is Tony Blair. His central rhetorical trick is restating positions he is arguing attractively and strongly, but in such a way that they obviously have limitations he hints at transcending. Dreams From My Father is hardly a black nationalist book — but it engages very sympathetically with black nationalism, not unlike the way in which Audacity of Hope engages sympathetically but critically with fusionist conservatism. In Dreams, black nationalism is twinned not with white racism, but with the white romantic liberalism of the family he grew up with. The good thing about that liberalism is that it tries to transcend tribalism — the bad part is that tribalism is too central to the human condition to be transcended.

I find much to agree with here, and, indeed, I would be all in favor of electing Barack Obama to succeed Jesse Jackson as black America’s unelected tribal leader. But, it’s an unelected job and I’m not black so I wouldn’t get a vote if there was one, and that’s not what he’s running for. Instead, Obama wants to get elected President of the United States, which is a rather different office altogether.

The key phrase in Pithlord’s analysis is “He recognizes that to advance the interests he is loyal to requires figuring out what other people’s loyalties are …” Conversely, by the same logic, we the people of the United States need to figure out what this Presidential candidate’s loyalties are. Exactly whose interests is Obama loyal to? (Besides his own career’s interests, of course).

The reporters covering him haven’t managed (or even tried) to get him to speak frankly about this crucial question. That’s what shocked so many naive people when they finally learned about Obama’s 20-year-relationship with Rev. Wright — that while on the campaign trail he says one thing, but at home for two decades he acted in a very different fashion.

When Colin Powell thought about running for President, he published an autobiography that stressed his success in taking command of a demoralized Army unit in South Korea that was sharply divided along racial lines during the Army’s drugged-up post-Vietnam malaise, and rebuilt espirit de corps by emphasizing that there’s no black or white in this man’s Army, just G.I. green, and the like. From that, I surmised that Powell’s loyalty lay less with his racial group and more with the U.S. Army (and by extension, with the United States of America). Now, that sounded to me like Powell had met a minimum requirement in who I would want as President: he’s shown in the past that he’s on the side of the United States of America.

In contrast, I’m still waiting for evidence that Obama has taken stands against black interests. What I see his supporters boasting is that he’s either pushed black interests more deftly than less sophisticated black politicians, or that he has (perhaps temporarily) eased off on pushing black interests when they could have gotten in the way of his personal ascent to supreme power. But does he have a record of taking stands against powerful black interests in the interest of the greater good of the citizens of the United States?

Perhaps somebody should ask him.

This is from Mark Steyn’s latest column in Macleans Magazine about the Canadian Human Rights commission which has been harassing him and others for expressing their opinions, (or for quoting Muslim fanatics expressing theirs)

The lead investigator testifying on Tuesday, Dean Steacy, is blind, but the justice his commission administers certainly isn’t: if you’re one of their allies, they’ll start lurking on websites before you’ve made a formal complaint…Marc Lemire then wrote a post on the Stormfront website explaining that his complaint had been rejected by Dean Steacy. Up popped “jadewarr” with a follow-up post. Who, you’re wondering, is “jadewarr”?

“It’s ‘jade war’ not ‘jade ware,’ ” said Dean Steacy, a little tetchily, to counsel. Mr. Steacy is the lead Section 13 “hate” investigator of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, but he may be better known — at least to the white supremacists and neo-Nazis among you — as “jadewarr,” his nom de guerre when he goes lurking on the Internet. “Jadeware” sounds like a nice wedding gift from Eaton’s, whereas “jadewarr” is an abbreviation for Jade Warrior, who is “a character out of a novel that I read as a teenager,” explained Mr. Steacy.
….
There must be a few genuine white supremacists whooping it up over at “Stormfront,” but they seem to be thin on the ground. Mr. Steacy, the CHRC’s lead investigator, is a member of Stormfront; Richard Warman, celebrated Canadian “human rights” crusader and plaintiff on every CHRC case since 2002, is a member of Stormfront; and Sgt. Stephen Camp is a member of Stormfront. What proportion of Canada’s “white supremacists” are, in fact, government employees? On a quiet day, chances must be pretty good that you’ll log on and find the joint deserted except for “jadewarr” (Mr. Steacy) trying to entrap “estate” (Sgt. Camp) while “estate” (Sgt. Camp) is simultaneously trying to entrap “axetogrind” (Mr. Warman). “There really should be a register of pseudonyms,” urged lawyer Doug Christie, “so that investigators don’t wind up investigating each other.”[Kangaroo court is now in session, By MARK STEYN , Macleans, March 26, 2008]

It’s important to note that these undercover officers are not trying to entrap the real neo-Nazis, (if any) into bomb plots–they’re trying to entrap them into saying bad things–for which they can be prosecuted under Canadian law, or fired from their jobs. We haven’t been covering this much at VDARE.com because it’s being covered very well by other sites, but I just had to look up the “Jade Warrior” thing for myself, and here it is:

The Jade Warrior
(The second book in the Blade series)
(1969)
A novel by Jeffrey Lord
When a computer transported Richard Blade to Dimension X, he found himself in Mortal danger. Dimension X was a land in peril. The aristocratic Caths, besieged by the Mongs, a cruel and mindless people, were constantly engulfed in wars and violence. Richard Blade was their only hope. But he was a man alone - and time was running out . . .

Now, it happens that I’ve read a lot of science fiction, including cheap paperbacks which in come in #’s 1 through 17, but I’ve never read the Richard Blade series, so I had to look it up. The reason I never read it is because it looked like they were all the same book, and this turns out to be the case–the SwordAndSorcery.org story belows says that the books can be read in any order, and they all have exactly the same plot, so here is an inside view of the teenage fantasies of a Canadian Human Rights investigator:

The story lines in each book are very similar. Blade is transported, totally naked, to a strange new dimension where he encounters a set of opposing societies, with one oppressing the other. His sense of what’s morally right leads him to join the oppressed people in their battle over their oppressors. He becomes involved with the leading ladies in the stories and has sexually explicit encounters with them, regardless if they are the oppressed or the oppressors. Some of his ladies are killed in some of the books. The dimensions are very similar to Earth, but with some different types of vegetation and animals, and different skin colorings on some of the peoples he encounters, such as dark blue, red, etc. [ Forgotten Stories of Fantastic Sword-fighters: ”Jeffrey Lord’s” Blade of Dimension X by Andy Beau ]

Of course, for this to work out, the fictional Blade’s sense of “what’s morally right” has to be dead-on, or he might accidentally pick the wrong side–in real life Dean Steacy is investigating insults to fanatical Muslims, which Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle has called “The moral equivalent of hiding Nazis in your attic during WW2.”

California Political News and Views just sent out this huge sob story from the notorious Los Angeles Times (Divided by death and the Mexican border: Illegal immigrant families are torn apart when someone dies. Survivors are afraid to follow a loved one home for burial, by Anna Gorman, April 2, 2008) with a typically incisive comment.

Reading the story, this jumped out at me:

The Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles pays for an immigrant’s final journey home if the family is unable to do so. In the last four years, the consulate has shipped more than 1,000 bodies to Mexico for burial.

They do? Given that burial at home is apparently important to Mexicans, this means the Mexican government is providing a subsidy to illegal immigration. If it were not available, on the margin some illegals would not come.

The Bush Administration should tell Mexico to stop this subsidy immediately.

Does anyone know if Mexico subsidizes live Mexicans who want to go home?

If not, Bush should suggest that instead.

In fact, he should demand it.

The Wall Street Journal’s Holman Jenkins argues that:

“Knocking down surplus homes would be the most efficient and equitable way to spend taxpayer dollars. It can proceed experimentally. It can be turned off quickly when the need evaporates. It would not be a lesson to Americans that housing debt is not real debt and need not be repaid. It wouldn’t benefit the most irresponsible lenders and borrowers at the expense of responsible ones. The housing market would still have to hit bottom, but the bottom would be higher (and sooner).

“Have no illusions about the alternative being fashioned in Congress. Behind the fig leaves that will be frantically waving, a lending bailout would be effective in stemming foreclosures and propping up home prices only if taxpayer money were used to put speculators’ housing bets back “in the money.”"

He may be right. But, after the government pays to knock down all those surplus homes built with illegal immigrant labor, shouldn’t the Wall Street Journal be ordered to publicly burn all its old editorials about how crucial illegal immigrant labor was to the economy?

Faye Bowers writes at the Christian Science Monitor:

The state already at the cutting edge of immigration reform seems poised to undertake yet another experiment: a guest worker program created and administered by a state rather than by the federal government.

The Arizona legislature is expected on Monday to fast track bills to create a temporary worker program in the state. Even with the backing of top lawmakers, the bills face big hurdles, including sign-off from the feds. But if approved, they would streamline the process for Arizona employers to hire temporary workers from Mexico – and would serve as a model for national reform, say supporters……..

Changes include a procedure to more fairly calculate wages for foreign workers and ways to cut red tape, making it easier and swifter to hire foreign workers, particularly at harvest time. To protect domestic workers, the proposed changes increase the time employers would be required to recruit American workers before resorting to hiring foreign labor.

I don’t have a problem in theory with state administered programs. Frankly, federally administered immigration has been a mess. The problem is that that the basic economics behind guest worker programs in the US have been fundamentally bad. I question whether guest worker programs have much of place in a democratic society. One possibly legitimate exception I can see is for true multinational corporations that both hire US citizens overseas and sometimes want to bring a similar number of foreign workers into the US.

Authoritarian countries like Saudi Arabia make extensive use of guest workers programs in part to control their own populations. Singapore has a good example of a competently administered and widely used guest worker program–but the fees for their program are far in excess of anything being proposed here.

What lawmakers need to come to grips with: US citizenship has substantial economic value. Guest worker programs that don’t have substantial fees and aren’t very carefully administered create a false illusion of being economically viable by mining the value of the citizenship of other Americans.

Now, in this case, the citizenship values the proposed Arizona program mines are those of the least skilled, and least economically viable Americans. Basically, we have holders of some rather valuable real estate in Arizona who are used less expensive immigrant labor to maintain higher property values instead of hiring American workers. It isn’t like there aren’t a lot of unskilled Americans that could do jobs.

Major American cities are full of such people. With reasonable incentives, these folks can and would move to Arizona to pick lettuce. Now, at the price at which they would pick lettuce, it might make more sense to automate the process, and provide employment for US technical workers.

Ultimately we have a choice here:Do we want a technologically advanced, democratic society or do we want to maintain the property values of large real estate owners in places like Arizona?

Elinor Mills writes at News.com:

“As a technology company, Google’s success depends on its ability to attract, hire, and retain the best and brightest wherever they come from,” they wrote in a post on the Google Public Policy Blog.

Last year, 248 of Google’s visa applications were accepted and 70 were rejected, the post says.

“That’s 70 potential U.S. employees who would be creating innovative new Google products, paying taxes, contributing to the U.S. economy, and spurring the creation of additional support jobs at Google,” the Google post says.

“If Google and other American companies are unable to hire and employ in the U.S. the world’s top scientists, mathematicians, and engineers–many of whom are already here studying at an American university–foreign competitors will and we will lose opportunities to create more jobs and innovate here at home,”

Later in the article, we see a bit of the truth:

According to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the typical H-1B holder holds a bachelor’s degree and is making a median salary of $50,000.

Now, the national median household income in the United States is around $44,389-and most of these folks don’t have college degrees-or live in places like Silicon Valley.

Now, maybe Google pays a bit better than the median for H-1b salaries, but this isn’t really about
getting a few “real bright” people at Microsoft or Google. If it were, Microsoft and Google could propose something like an auction of the existing H-1b quota so that rich companies like their own could get the visas they need out of the existing quota.

What this is really about, it making sure that large tech companies can attract workers using a “corporate benefit” that costs them very little to provide-US citizenship. The problem is that doing so means the US has less human capital than would otherwise. Basically guest work programs as they have been structured in the US pretty much assure that US citizens will tend to avoid those professions that are the target of guest worker visas.

Countries like Japan have competitive economies and very little immigration. Now, of course, companies like Google will be trying to get something for nothing. but ultimately, that isn’t the American way.