Tribal Chinese were out in force on Saturday, squawking about CNN’s Jack Cafferty, who had the temerity to speak honestly when describing the products of their beloved communist homeland.

More than 1,000 ethnic Chinese protesters assembled near CNN’s LA office to shriek “Liar” at Jack Cafferty and demand his dismissal.

Because they have absorbed a pre-Cliff-Notes grasp of freedom of expression, one member of the model minority prefaced his demands that Cafferty be fired by the usual disclaimer. It followed a familiar pattern: “I support free speech, BUT…”

“We understand free speech,” said Lake Wang, 39, of Thousand Oaks. “But what if Cafferty said this about other racial groups? I think he would be fired. I think he’s jealous of China.”
[Thousands in Hollywood protest remarks from CNN's Jack Cafferty, LA Times, April 19, 2008]

R-i-i-i-ight! Red China is far too special to be criticized by a mere American.

Plus Cafferty (and millions of other Americans) are green with envy that the People’s Republic has achieved economic growth by maintaining an authoritarian police state and creating air visible to the naked eye. You betcha!

And what terrible thing did Jack Cafferty say on CNN?

Cafferty made the comments during an appearance on “The Situation Room” that aired April 9.Speaking about the U.S. trade deficit with China, Cafferty commented: “We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.”"So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed,” he continued. “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.”
[SoCal Protest Slams CNN For McCafferty China Slurs, KPIX-TV, San Francisco, April 19, 2008]

Obviously the timeframe Cafferty used clearly limited his comments to the commie government. But racism is such a handy all-purpose stick for stirring up trouble.

So we are not only being poisoned by the PRC’s crummy manufactured items from kids’ toys to medicine, we are supposed to shut up and be grateful to their local representatives. Another unexpected benefit of diversity immigration!

A federal government serious about fighting illegal immigration would–at the least–cut off funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” that allow illegal aliens free rein and prevent local police from cooperating with immigration officials.
Of course, our federal government does no such thing. On the other hand, a case in the Cornhusker state indicates it might cut off funds if a state government doesn’t coddle illegal aliens.

Although in this case, it might be better not to have the funds after all.

According to this article on LegalNewsline.com,

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning’s failure to prosecute a case on behalf of two illegal immigrants could cost the state federal funding aimed at fighting discrimination.[AG's refusal to take illegal immigrants' case threatens federal funding, by Chris Rizo,April 19, 2008]

Get that? It could cost Nebraska the loss of “federal funding aimed at fighting discrimination”–well, every cloud has its silver lining, doesn’t it?

Earlier this month, after the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission forwarded him the latest case involving the illegal immigrants, Bruning said the state should consider shutting down the commission entirely.

Now you’re talking!

Taxpayer money, he added, should not be used to pursue a case on behalf of an illegal immigrant, even if there was a legitimate complaint.

After all, we’re talking about people who don’t even have a right to be in the country!

But HUD is getting tough, and is threatening Nebraska :

A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday that it would no longer reimburse the state for pursuing discrimination cases and would stop forwarding complaints it receives to the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission.

The Nebraska commission would lose $240,000 annually if federal officials stop paying the state for each complaint it investigates.

In addition to fair housing complaints, the commission also investigates cases of alleged job discrimination and public accommodation cases.

Federal funds, in other words, used to meddle in Nebraska private businesses and harass employers and property owners. It sounds like Nebraska would be better off not getting that money anyway!

Meanwhile, kudos to Nebraska’s AG Bruning, another Middle American hero opposing the illegal invasion.

The Washington Post reports:

Barack Obama released his 2007 tax returns yesterday as the latest move in a running dialogue with Hillary Clinton over which presidential candidate has been more open about personal finances.

Obama’s tax returns showed that he made $4.2 million last year, most of it ($3.9 million) a result of profits from his best-selling books. He reported paying $1,396,772 in federal taxes and making charitable contributions totaling $240,370. Those donations included $26,270 to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which was the parish of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., his controversial former longtime pastor.

The funny thing is that I bet Rev. Wright considers Obama an ungrateful tightwad. After all, Obama makes $3.9 million in one year off his two books, for one of which Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon provides the title and for the other it provides the central climax.

Does Obama do the Christian thing and tithe? Hardly. Instead of 10%, Obama chips in 0.7% of his income.

Betrayed, I tell you. Betrayed.

Just like with Oprah Winfrey. She starts making 9 figures annually, but does she tithe as a reward to Rev. Wright for all the spiritual uplift he’s provided her?

No. In fact, she quits the church.

Poor Rev. Wright will have to spend his retirement years living in a mansion in a gated community on a public golf course, Odyssey in Tinley Park, and not a particularly superb one either, only $78 to play on weekends.

Do you think Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. might be in the mood to sign a contract to write a book himself? Something with a title like “Me and My Spiritual Mentee, Sen. Esq. Barack H. Obama, Jr.” only catchier. Publication date, say, October 1, 2008?

I was also wondering if anybody has made more money off of nonfiction books that fewer people have finished than Sen. Obama (Stephen Hawking, maybe?). But then I started thinking about what percentage of all best-selling books that don’t reveal who the murderer is on the last page or whether the kids escape being eaten by the tyrannosaurus ever get finished. I bet it’s low.

Update: A reader points out that one definite answer to the question of “Who has made more money off unfinished books than Obama” is Obama’s opponent’s husband, Bill Clinton, who has made $29.6 million in advances and royalties for his 1008 page autobiography (and miscellaneous quasi-books). Heck, I could barely finish reading Bill’s opening sentence, with its 11 prepositional phrases:

“Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana.”

Last February, The Charlotte Observer ran a six-part series, The Cruelest Cuts, which essentially accused a large North Carolina poultry producer, House of Raeford of maltreating and exploiting the illegal Hispanic workers who apparently make up the bulk of the firm’s work force:

“Our journalists found …that House of Raeford has undergone a work force transformation. In the early 1990s, its workers were largely African Americans. Today, between 80 percent and 90 percent of workers at some of its plants are Latinos. Most have no legal standing in this country; most are poor…”

[Poultry series exposes a new, silent subclass, By Rick Thames The Charlotte Observer,February 10, 2008]
This was naïve of The Charlotte Observer, since in Primary season no politician wanted to be seen championing illegal immigrants (or offending the powerful interests which benefit from their presence). The well researched story essentially went nowhere, except for some routine employer-bashing by Senator Kennedy and other Democrats at a Senate sub-committee hearing.[Lawmakers: Toughen poultry plant penalties, Congressional hearing on hazards prompted by Observer articles, By Ames Alexander And Lisa Zagaroli, The Charlotte Observer, April 2, 2008]

Naïve and incurious ra-ra immigration enthusiasm has, of course long been a hallmark of The Observer on the immigration issue.

But now national election concerns have faded, North Carolina’s Democratic Governor, Mike Easley, has crawled out from under cover and tried to use the series to make some political capital at the expense of the state’s Labor Department Commissioner, an elected Republican. In the process, he lapses into Illegal Immigrant Veneration:

“Legal or not these workers are still human beings,” he said. “They’re still God’s children. And we have a moral obligation - that supersedes state or federal law - to treat them with dignity.”… Too many employers work immigrants until they are seriously hurt, Easley said.
“Then they just throw them on the curb and move on,” he said. “There need to be in place some laws to protect these workers. The people of the state don’t want to tolerate this.”

[Easley: Labor Dept. needs to be more aggressive The Charlotte Observer , April 17, 2008]

What The Charlotte Observer, Senate Democrats, and Governor Easley fail to grasp (or prefer to ignore) is that is the Government which has created this problem by not enforcing immigration law.

Meat processing has always been physically arduous, dangerous, and unpleasant. It is also an extremely competitive business. When supplied with a work force, which as Rick Thames in the essay above describes as “A disturbing subclass of compliant workers with few, if any, rights…As a group…compulsively compliant, ever-conscious that one complaint could lead to their firing or arrest or deportation,” then abuses are extremely likely and capital investment to automate and improve conditions unlikely.

Last year, discussing his excellent study demonstrating that Hispanics are eroding South Carolina wages, USC’s Doug Woodward said:

“What we’re doing here in South Carolina is importing cheap labor to our economy,”

It is the politicians who let this happen who are really responsible for any abuses at House of Raeford.