I'm not in the habit of quoting people with whom I disagree. Perhaps you are? My error then. In the future when you post something you don't agree with perhaps you could identify it as such? This has nothing to do with censorship either. Show me a paper that is accurate and reasonably complete that demonstrates immigration creates any shortfall in the US and I'll happily read it. I guarantee it won't be written by Cosman, Gilchrist or their like! [JT]
>So, if the answer is to increase the funding - which would be to go
>way beyond just stopping the cuts -- why isn't everyone on this list
>doing something about that instead of allowing people to go without?
>I.e. why don't people put their actions where their mouths are?
>Hopeless? not possible in these political times? Dems are
>spineless? You know what the excuses will be. Whatever.
>
>It is human nature to want to protect oneself from harm. I feel
>like I'm being punished on this list for giving a damn that disabled
>people including myself are losing their health care -- our only
>means of health care I should say since we aren't insurable by
>private ins. corps.
>
>The reality on the ground is that people are being pitted against one
>another because they want to survive. So do something about it.
>
>Marta
I care about everyone's healthcare equally. I don't elevate Native American health care needs above the needs of immigrants or the disabled just because I happen to be NA. I work for universal healthcare period. I will not spend my time fighting for health care for one group at the expense of another. I won't screw someone else over to take care of myself and people around me.
By the way, what are you doing to help Native Americans escape the oppression and poverty caused by the BIA? Don't you care that Native Americans are amoung the poorest people in the US? They go without food and medicine, decent housing, and clothing, and receive substandard educations. Why don't you do something about this?
The reality on the ground is that we are not pitted against each other. You selfishly believe we are. Yours is the argument of a scab. "But I have to put food on the table too" (or medicine or whatever) Solidarity is impossible with thinking such as yours. Instead you preach we should each fight each other for crumbs because "that is the reality on the ground" such as you see it. You pick on immigrants because you perceive their position is weaker than yours and you hope that if the good white tax payers have to choose between a dirty Mexican and a poor disabled girl they'll choose the poor disabled girl. I feel fairly certain you'll deny this is what you believe but it is exactly what you are advocating regardless of whether you believe it or not. It seems most people on this list are trying to find a more polite way to put it. Perhaps my post is overly nasty but you are advocating an extremely hateful bit of racist nonsense and dancing around that fact serves no useful purpose. I think it was Miles who pointed out we hesitate to call a policy or position racist because in our hyperindividualistic society this is seen as an individual trait rather than a social phenomena. This isn't an attack on Marta but on the idea that immigrants are the cause of someone elses shortages. Spreading that idea is both dumb and dangerous.
To add a touch of irony it was during the Schiavo debate that you actually had the nerve to tell me how comfortably my ideas fit with the Nazi's. I think this thread is pretty well played out on my end.
John Thornton