The People's Observer

Lou Dobbs is a fraud.

With rhetoric that evokes the best work of Herr Joseph Goebbels, Dobbs has managed to sell a phony "war on the middle class," that threatens to ensnare those it purports to liberate.

His tactics are not noble. He focuses upon anecdotal evidence, unvetted sources, and slavishly sycophantic commentary and opinion from peripatetic politicians and media hosts. Beyond that, Dobbs uses a style book which relies upon constantly repeated adjectives to reinforce a xenophobic, isolationist, and authoritarian outlook.

Imports from China are always dangerous, tainted, or merely unsafe.

Troops and laws are always ours, which discounts CNN's penetration into nearly every country on the face of the planet. The "royal collective" is a tactic beloved by managerial seminars and retreats as a means of getting those deemed to be inferior to take ownership of organizational errors as part of the collective. This includes "our broken borders." (italics are mine.)

God forbid that any heinous crime is committed by someone who crossed the border and stayed too long, or came without a pedigree. Instantly, that individual is labelled an "illegal, criminal, alien Mexican, drug smuggler/gang member/rapist/litterbug." Anyone who may suggest that under the United States Constitution, individuals are innocent until proven guilty and deserving of due process is immediately part of an "amnesty agenda."

If no crime exists where the accused's immigration status is included in objective reporting, Dobbs chooses to pick his go-to guys, the two ICE agents who shot a man in the tuchas, then covered it up. They did not get sent up for shooting the dude in the butt; they got sent to prison for lying about it.

Dobbs is somewhat less than intellectually honest, here. No record exists of Dobbs offering the same benefit of the doubt to Bill Clinton, for discharging something arguably less lethal than a bullet, then lying about it. No one really wants to be on the receiving end of either shot, but only one of the two has a chance of going wide and hitting the femoral artery.

No attempt will be made here to assign a pretext of bigotry to Dobbs on the immigration issue. Like a socially maladroit teenager, it would be too easy to attempt a bon mot, and too easy to get wrong. However, what is clear is that Lou Dobbs has found an issue which can be utilized for maximum effect on ratings, book sales and Lou Dobbs' profitability.

Nevertheless, some of the "experts," (quotations mine) who have spoken on the issue have been revealed to be connected to white supremacists. There have been charges of undocumented immigrants causing a resurgence of Leprosy, as well as taking a disproportionate level of funds for social services.

First of all, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 165 cases of Leprosy were reported in 2005, the last year of reporting found in the Wandering Gentile's research. Of those, 125 cases were among persons born in the United States of America. This concurs with research vetted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and is in fact lower than the average number of cases reported per year by the same government agency.

Dobbs was forced to recant the statistic quoted on his program in an amusingly humbling moment on the air.

With regard to the disproportionate funds for social services, it is absolutely wrong. This is a hypothesis tendered by anti-immigrant groups which discounts the fact that Federal requirements for social services include ascertaining that the recipient of social services is legally entitled to said services by being a citizen of the United States.

Please understand the confusion here; if undocumented persons are receiving federal benefits, then it is the negligence/fraud of federal employees not fulfilling their duties as prescribed by congressional mandate. That is worthy of investigation. There is a very large difference between persons who obtain benefits, and those who are being paid to know who deserves them.

Likewise, there is a clarion call in Dobbs' nightly tirade for "Government" to get involved in inspections of "dangerous imports from Communist China." If you want to call for a war on the middle class, then there would be no better opening salvo than starting a trade war with China.

This is not to defend the environmental/human rights/economic record of the PRC. The point of Chinese trade practices and the current imbalance being anticompetitive at the moment is salient. But in the long term, openness and prosperity in China will be in the best interests of the free world because these are the conditions in which education and democracy grow.

For the time being, low cost imports from China, proffered through large retailers, contribute to a high standard of living in the United States. Should a consumer choose to find goods from a source closer to home, options exist via the internet to find a product that suits the consumer's need. It's called free enterprise. The consumer is required to be proactive, though.

The Chinese don't have a monopoly on products which are dangerous or unsuited for the market. Anyone who remembers the Chevrolet Vega or the Ford Pinto is quite aware that Americans can do a spectacular job of producing unfit or dangerous products.

Finally, Dobbs is absolutely wrong about what he calls "amnesty." In February, this blog suggested the result of removing twelve million productive individuals from the source level of food production and construction would be fundamentally detrimental to the United States economy.

Since then, most readers will confirm, through their own experience, soaring food prices. The collapse of the subprime mortgage market has taken some of the sting out of the effects on the construction industry, but growth markets like Dallas, Atlanta, and Houston are seeing the beginning of an inflationary spiral owing to a lack of willing labor in the construction industry.

Not coincidentally, these are also areas where anti-immigration sentiment has produced an environment hostile to those who build homes. Forget a wall. If one wants to live behind a wall in a controlled environment, there is another word for it: prison.

Somehow, your Wandering Gentile holds no illusions about empowering Lou Dobbs as warden.