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“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
For generations, these words, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty have served as an invitation to immigrants to come to the United States and find a better way of life. Promises of freedom to live and work in complete freedom to determine their own destiny, people from every region of the world have come looking for a better life. Ellis Island was the gateway to Paradise for my great-grandparents, and the ancestors of a large majority of my fellow citizens. Overcoming hardships that included prejudice and fear, Irish, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian, and every other nationality contributed to the human melting-pot that is America.
Today, immigration has become a flash point in the political landscape, fueled by anger over the shooting of an Arizona farmer, and the death of a Roman Catholic nun in a drunk-driving crash caused by an illegal immigrant in Virginia. Both incidents have led to laws and policies being enacted to question the citizenship status of anyone police take into custody. There seems to be no middle ground on this issue, with people vehemently supporting or opposing these laws and policies.
I find myself with mixed feelings over the issue of illegal immigrant status. On the one hand, those who enter the country illegally are breaking the laws of the United States, and should be held accountable. On the other hand, many of these people are here because they cannot earn a living wage in their country of origin, or they are escaping oppressive conditions where they are persecuted for their political beliefs, or their religion. Sounds very similar to the experience of the very first settlers to arrive on our shores a few hundred years ago.
There is no question that immigration reform is needed. The current laws are not working, and if for no other reason that national security, the movement of undocumented persons into this country must stop. I have strong reservations that anything close to racial profiling will solve our problems, and it will be too easy to victimize those who are here legally, but share racial similarities to those we are trying to prevent from crossing our borders illegally.
Another thing to consider is that preventing the entry of illegal immigrants is going to come at a cost. Right or wrong, costs of housing, food and some services is kept low because employers are able to hire those here illegally substantially cheaper than they can citizens, or immigrants carrying ‘green cards’ allowing them to live and work in the United States while maintaining citizenship in their countries of origin. I have little sympathy for higher costs faced by those employers, and the impacts to their business if laws are changed and tighter control placed on immigration. They are, in some ways, more guilty than the people they hire at below market rates for their skills. In fact, if they didn’t make the jobs available, there would be no reason for people to illegally cross the borders.
Is There a Solution?
For the last thirty years, the United States has steadily exported jobs to foreign countries. In my home state of North Carolina, the first industry to lose jobs was the textile industry. Companies moved factories to the Asia-Pacific region where textile mills could hire workers at a fraction of what unions demand in the U.S. Then furniture manufacturers discovered they could produce products cheaper outside of the United States. Even the automobile industry has found it less expensive to build cars in Mexico and Canada.
It would seem that with all of these jobs being moved to countries like Mexico, it would be less likely that the citizens of Mexico would seek to come to the U.S. But in point of fact, many of the factories in Mexico and other countries pay such a meager wage, that it is still hard for those people to make a living. The only ones who benefit from the exportation of jobs are the stockholders of the companies that made the move.
In the past ten years, hundreds of thousands of high-tech jobs have been moved out of the U.S. to China, India, Vietnam, Russia, and other off-shore locations where workers could be found at a fraction of what workers with similar skills make in this country. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and other high-tech companies made the decision to move programmer and other high-tech skills “off-shore” arguing that it was necessary to remain competitive. And there is probably some truth to that. But in the process, hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States lost their jobs.
The resulting impact to the economy of the United States resulted in contributing greatly to one of the worst recessions the United States has seen in generations. College students are struggling to identify a career where they will be able to make a living, and my children and grandchildren face the very real possibility that their standard of living will be less than mine. That has never happened in our history. Successive generations have always been able to say that they were doing better, and enjoying a better lifestyle than the generations that came before them.
Our leaders need to take steps to ensure that American workers are able to compete equally with other areas of the world. Where American companies move jobs overseas, there should be tax ramifications if the workers in those new locations are not paid a comparative wage. Steps should be taken to help countries like Mexico create employment opportunities for its citizens that allows them to live a decent life without looking to illegally work in the United States. And as one of the major sources of consumption in the world, people in the United States are going to have to be willing to adjust their lifestyle to absorb the higher costs that will result from these steps.
Sadly, I don’t see that happening any time soon. I am afraid that things are going to get much worse before they get better, and conditions are going to become desperate for many workers in the United States. Congress cannot continue to extend unemployment benefits indefinitely, and at some point spending by government is going to have to be brought back under control. My hope is that we all learn to be generous in our willingness to support each other when times get bad. Because we’re all going to need the help.
 Empty Platform
 Image by truebluetitan via Flickr
This blog title should up my visitor count substantially. Everyone, especially those who are blogging for profit, want ideas on how to increase traffic on their blogs, and even though I don’t have any designs on earning a living from my blog, it would be nice to be able to cover the hosting costs every year. So I’ve begun doing some things to re-invigorate my blog and hopefully increase the traffic. I mentioned my quest to build up my blog the other day when I wrote about finding my blogging voice in the post, It Was a Joke!
Since I started Tarheel Ramblings almost three years ago, I have tried a lot of the different promotion sites; Blog Catalog, Fuel My Blog, Entrecard, etc., with limited success in generating traffic. Let me rephrase that. There was limited success in generating readers that consistently returned and participated in discussions or left comments. Most were only interested in hit-and-run visits to boost their ‘hit’ count, or whatever the currency of the originating site happened to be.
There are exceptions, of course, and I have made friends at almost all of these promotion sites. I guess you could call them social networks for bloggers. In fact, I’ve known and followed some of these people from the very beginning. Kathy Frederick, of The Junk Drawer Blog is one prime example. I actually met Kathy through another blogger, Blog Bloke, who has a great site with tips for maximizing blogging success and utilizing social networks to your best advantage. At the time, both Kathy and I were looking for suggestions to improve and learned about registering our domains, and then self-hosting our blogs using WordPress.
Those initial discussions turned into exchanges of e-mails to solve problems, make improvements and cry on each other’s shoulders when things didn’t go right, or someone pushed the optimal button to get us fired up. I think I can safely speak for Kathy and say that we have become mutual fans. And that brings me to the real point of this post. It was a visit to Kathy’s blog that resulted in my joining Tribal Blogs.
 Image via Wikipedia
Like me, Kathy had become disenchanted with Entrecard and found Tribal Blogs. Started by Jen, of Redhead Ranting, TB is more of a mini-social network of bloggers than a promotion site. Posting helpful articles written by herself and other bloggers, and providing a very nice discussion board with a variety of topics and discussions. Well-moderated, and tightly controlled, the Tribal Blogs discussion boards is a great source of information covering all aspects of blogging. Many of the members are a huge resource for getting things moving in the right direction for new bloggers, or getting things back on track for more experienced bloggers.
Case in point: As a part of my move to re-invigorate my blog, I left a post in the discussion boards asking members to take a look at my blog and provide a critique of layout, content, appearance, and anything else they cared to comment on. In a matter of hours, I had a list of suggestions from Jen and Cardio Girl that were not only helpful, but extremely practical and easy to implement. The result was a complete revamping of my blog layout and structure that you see today. (If this is your first visit, you won’t notice the change. But those who have been coming around for a while should notice.) It took me just a couple of hours to make the changes, and I’m very please with the result, at least in terms of appearance. Time will tell if there is an increase in traffic.
 Image via Wikipedia
Another change that came as the result of discussions on Tribal Blogs was the implementation of advertisements on my blog with the intent of generating a small amount of revenue. Not wanting to become one of those ‘commercial’ bloggers where the production of income is more important than content, or to even appear that I was one of them, I have avoided the inclusion of Google Adsense, or any other ads on my blog. But the discussion in the forums helped me realize that there was nothing wrong with advertising if in was done in a non-intrusive way and the content of my blog remained high.
The bottom line is this is a shameless plug for Tribal Blogs. No matter if you are just getting started in blogging or are a veteran, whether you consider yourself a professional or an amateur, whether you’re in it to promote an idea or a product, Tribal Blogs has something for you. Best of all, you get to associate with a great group of people like Kathy, Jen, Cardio Girl and ME! So my secret to successful blogging is to get involved with Tribal Blogs today.
 Where is Papa Smurf? Or psychedelic paradise?
 Would these qualify as 'shrooms? These mushrooms were growing in the neighbor’s front yard and I thought I’d snap a couple of pictures before some neo-hippy decides to harvest them to explore the psychedelic possibilities.
 Image via Wikipedia
After doing all the manly things I do every morning, including the job I get paid for, I sat down to eat lunch and watch The View with Mrs. Rambler. One of today’s Hot Topics was about Chelsea Clinton‘s wedding and the amount of money spent on it. Joy Behar pointed out that the Clinton’s were coming under fire from some quarters because of the elaborate wedding and the amount of money spent. And the conversation turned into a testy back-and-forth between Behar and co-host, Elizabeth Hasselbeck over conspicuous consumption.
Elizabeth, being ever the loyal Republican trotted out the standard accusations of class envy and over reaching desire to control in response to Behar’s statement that such audacious displays of wealth in the current economic climate seemed a little out-of-place. What actually started the discussion was a story about Khloe Kardashian buying her husband a $400,000 car as a gift for winning the NBA title.
Both of these are definitely examples of people of means spending huge amounts of money and seem excessive in a time when a huge number of people in the U.S. are struggling to just put food on their table and keep a roof over their heads. And both examples show that the rich really don’t give much thought to the message they send by such obvious displays of the amount of money they have in the bank.
But who really had the moral high ground between Behar and Hasselbeck? In my opinion,neither of them really have a clue what is really going on. For liberal celebrities like Joy, it’s “the right thing to do” when they point out these injustices. But until they are willing to do shows like The View and accept a more reasonable salary for doing so, it’s a little hypocritical. What she is basically saying is, it’s OK to be rich as long as you don’t get your picture in People Magazine showing how you spend it.
Elizabeth Hasselbeck, good Republican she is, is wasting no opportunity to point out the liberal elite among the Democrats to try gain points for her side. Never mind that two of the Republican candidates running for election in California ran Fortune 500 companies, one of them getting a huge “Golden Parachute” when she was fired by Hewlett-Packard.
What’s the real issue?
Both of these women make good points. In a struggling economy, displays of conspicuous consumption by the wealthy are troubling to those who are not so fortunate. On the other hand, people of wealth are free to do whatever they want with their money. My only problem is how these situations are played out in the media. I don’t need it shoved down my throat that there are rich people out there who get to enjoy things I can’t even dream about.
There is a vast divide between the wealthy in this country and the working middle class. Never mind those who don’t even make enough money to qualify as being poor. It’s a little known truth that every day children go to bed hungry in a country that has the level of wealth that can be found in the U.S. That is shameful.
There are many among the rich and famous who give generously to charity, and most of them have their favorite causes which are well-supported. No one can be expected to solve all of the problems of the needy by themselves. But a little self-control and restraint would not be a bad thing.
Why do I need to know that Kardashian spent her husband’s money on a car for him? For that matter, why do I need to know how much the Clinton’s spent on Chelsea’s wedding? No one in my family advertises what they spend on such things. In fact, it is considered bad manners to inquire about cost when someone has a new car, or their daughter gets married, or they buy a new suit. Why is it acceptable to trot out those figures for celebrities? I don’t need to know those things!
The media loves trotting out this information. And the consuming public loves to eat up what is dished to them, and then either rave about how fabulous it is or rant over what a travesty it is. I guess it allows people to either wallow in their own misery, because they can’t spend $400,000 on a car, or feel better about themselves because they would never be conspicuous consumers.
I’m beginning to feel that people can’t be happy until they can choose sides and point fingers. I just refuse to pick a side because neither one has a corner on moral justification.
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