Not to be outdone, on May 26, 2012, the Kansas state legislature decided to stop the influx of Sharia laws that were clearly overrunning our lands, they passed Senate Bill 79, which outlawed any foreign, or religious, interference with the laws of their fine state.
Allow me to share my earlier summation of that train wreck.
For those of you who slept through school, the New Testament section of the Christian Bible (part of the basis for banning gay marriage) was written in Greece and Rome. Mostly Rome. Its original (written) language was Greek and its first translation of value was into Latin and it was used as the basis for numerous onerous laws that led to the social perversions of the Middle Ages. The other half of the Christian Bible, the Old Testament, was written in Aramaic and is the basis for existing laws in Israel. In other words, it is in clear violation of Section 2 above.
And the denial of marriage rights, or any other rights, to gays or anyone else is a clear violation of Section 3. Especially if the denial of those rights is based on any Biblical admonition.
So Kansas, in its attempt to return to the Dark Ages, has just managed to make San Francisco look like Utah.
GO KC!
Yeah, as you might have guessed, lots of lawyers are having fun in Kansas.
Especially when people, who actually stayed awake in school, start pointing out that “gay marriage” predates the bible.
But even before these messes I took a look at what happens when hardcore immigration – ahem – reform is instituted. Back on December 9, 2011, I cataloged the death of Postville Iowa. Once the home of immigrants from numerous lands it is now a ghost town. Companies have been forced to close and relocate. Jobs dried up. The local meat packing plant, which paid $19 an hour now pays around $8 to locals. And it’s prices to consumers rose as it was taken over by “honest American” people and not them “dern forners.”
Yeah, try living on $8 an hour.
So, that experience would seem to be a clear warning sign to most people to tread carefully and consider the consequences of their actions.
Who am I kidding?
Last year Alabama passed HB 56 which has led to the arrest of executives from Mercedes Benz for having foreign accents (German) and the recreation of Exodus as even legal immigrants feared for their lives and livelihoods.
The result?
Alabama is teetering on total insolvency. Van Le, an alleged American, has the whole story.
This time last year, Alabama had just begun implementing its worst-in-the-nation anti-immigrant law, HB 56, causing chaos in the state and forcing neighborhoods full of immigrants to flee. At the time, state senator and HB 56 sponsor Scott Beason rationalized the law as “a jobs bill,” one that would drive immigrants out of the state and return American jobs to Americans.
A year later, it turns out that Alabama has the worst economy in the Southeast.
“Worse than Louisiana,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Joey Kennedy at the Birmingham News. “Worse than South Carolina. Heck, worse than, my goodness, ThankGodforMississippi.”
“There is a saving grace,” however, as he noted. “While Alabama’s economy sucks more than any other in the Southeast, it’s only the fourth worst economy in the United States. Yea us! We’re No. 47!”
The slowdown in Alabama’s economy can be traced back to HB 56 and its incredibly harsh anti-immigrant measures. A few months after Alabama began implementing the law, University of Alabama economist Dr. Sam Addy released a report finding that HB 56 could ultimately cost Alabama as much as $11 million in economic output and as many as 70,000 to 140,000 jobs. It turns out that when immigrant laborers and field workers left the state, American workers—contrary to Beason’s theories—didn’t want to do back-breaking manual labor, and crops suffered severe labor shortages. And when all these workers leave, suddenly there are fewer people buying the products they would’ve bought, and needing the services they would’ve needed—and economic output goes down.
That’s why, Kennedy writes, “Unemployment [in Alabama] is down to about 8.3 percent, from last October’s 8.8 percent, but economists attribute that to jobs that have simply disappeared, not to jobs having been created.”
And yet the state leaders who got Alabama into this mess seem unwilling to recognize the consequences of HB 56. As Kennedy writes:
Our state leaders are nothing if not in profound denial. There is no telling how many business opportunities we’ve missed because companies took Alabama off their lists of possibilities after our hateful law was passed and our national reputation as an open and accepting state was destroyed…
Alabama has self-inflicted this economic wound, just so a group of self-serving politicians could score political points at election time by pandering to our worst natures. They accomplished their goal. Meanwhile, Alabama’s weak economy continues to suffer, unable to reach even the most modest of its goals.
A few months ago, the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down much of HB 56, declaring it mostly unconstitutional while tentatively leaving a “show me your papers” component standing. The move came too late for Alabama, though, where it seems the damage has been done.
The three states worse off than Alabama are Nevada, West Virginia and Mississippi. Oddly enough all four states have minimal diversity in their economies or populations.
I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.
Until later, I remind you that the world is round and what we do forward will always come up from behind.
One Day on Earth – Motion Picture Trailer from One Day on Earth
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.