As IF Times

Mexico issues travel alert over new Arizona law.

As if.  What are they going to say to their disgruntled citizens?  Illegally emigrate somewhere else?  Try Canada?  Again simple logic tells you that if you are a legitimate citizen of  the U.S. or legitimately travelling there, what’s the big deal?  There’s all manner of chest beating about random harassment.  Heck I feel that way when I get a speeding ticket.  Seldom have I played the race card on that one.

As I pointed out in a previous posting, the real reasons Mexico don’t want their illegals harassed in the U.S. are entirely pragmatic.   Firstly, those that are criminals, they don’t want back.  Secondly, the amount of monies repatriated to families back home by those working in the U.S. is a huge sum of money.   Though hard to put a number on these funds because some of it is in cash and others by traceable means, the numbers are substantial.  According to Wikipedia’s data from the World Bank, remittances have consistently hovered over 21 billion dollars a year to Mexico from the U.S.   Interestingly, this number is down from previous years from the 25 to 26 billion dollar range because of construction slowdowns in the U.S.

So the Mexican government would prefer to keep this hidden part of their revenue stream going.  Especially since the war against their narcotics gangs is escalating and expensive.  Out of a discussion with a deranged colleague recently, a solution was proposed to Mexico’s problems and indirectly can solve America’s immigration problem.

Mexico can declare war on the U.S.

It would be a short and virtually bloodless war actually, but in doing so, Mexico can give up and be the “vanquished” nation.  In that role, they would be eligible for all kinds of rebuilding and economic aid from the Americans who seem to have a history of doing these things.  With the border gone, voila, no more illegal immigration.  No more harassment of illegals, it’ll just be regular harassment.  A huge cheap labor force is right at the doorstep.  Take that China.  Mexico’s drug war will be America’s problem now, but at least they can marshall the forces of its full military to combat it.

Naturally Obamacare would cover the new constituency of citizens since that’s the right thing to do.  Demand for doctors would skyrocket and resources can be shifted away from those studying to be lawyers.  Unions would have an entire new country’s worth of people to pillage.  All the gringos in Hollywood who have been upset at not paying enough wages to their house staff can now happily pay new American level wages.

At the moment, the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim lives in Mexico.  When the takeover happens, the U.S. will have a huge new victim for its tax coffers, move over Warren and Bill.   Tourists will no longer have to do mental gymnastics in currency conversion when purchasing trinkets in the new Mexican state.  They can overpay for things in good old U.S. currency instead.

And let’s not forget an important side benefit.  Tequilla would be domestic.

Obama seeks to ‘reconnect…young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women’ for 2010 – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com.

Back in another lifetime when I was in high school, one of the memories I have is of the  election held for the presidency of the student body during senior year.  The eventual winner, popular as he was anyway, campaigned on a platform of student freedom.  One of the ways to express this freedom was the ability to paint their school lockers any color they wished.  Although eventually elected, somehow this radical proposal never got through to actual implementation.  Nevertheless, his campaign was identified with this idea and he was known as the locker paint candidate to an otherwise indifferent population. 

The news item linked above reminds me of this experience.  As the current president has moved into his second year of office, much of the “hope and change” that was offered during the campaign has failed to live up to the hype and rhetoric offered at the time.  Those in the position of paying taxes and having to live under the consequences of the administration’s policies are realizing that implementation of such would be fanciful and indeed damaging to the nation’s long term health.

As the mid term elections approach and it becomes obvious that he has lost most of the moderate base that went along with “painting the hall lockers”, the President is increasingly turning to what he feels is a friendly constituency, apparently the young, the black and the Latinos, a group he acknowledges brought him to office in the first place.  This is an interesting message because the implication is that the rest of the population are no longer  friendly to his message and policies and therefore does not truly represent them.  So if you’re old, white and non Latino, you are now considered “them”. If the progress thus far was something to crow about, his appeal would be to the wider population, not just parts that he feels are sympathetic to his message.  As it turns out, this is the exact opposite of the inclusive government promised during his messianic campaign. 

We’ve had inklings of this regularly over the past year or so as the “us” and “them” tactics were usually employed to sell his policies.  It turns out the “thems” happen to be the majority of the population.  The party may soon be known as the “Them-ocrats”.  Now the strategy appears to be to pander to those he thinks are still on his side.  Far from being the uniter for the population, he is responsible for increasing divisiveness.  It will be interesting to see if this gains any traction since it implies that the constituency they are now pandering to do not read and do not fully understand the policy initiatives as the larger population does.   He may be surprised to find that few want painted lockers after all.