71 Thoughts to “Councilman Under Fire for Racial Comments”

  1. Rick Bentley
    June 16, 2008 at 11:17 am

    not on this issue

  2. Mackie
    June 16, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Rick,

    Here’s some advice. Try renting some three stooges movies…

  3. Elena
    June 16, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Rick,
    It sounds like you are advocating a police state?

  4. Rick Bentley
    June 16, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    And to me it sometimes seems that you are advocating anarchy.

  5. El Guapo
    June 16, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    Rick thinks that the odds are probably greater than 9 out of 10 that guys not speaking English and doing manual labor are illegal. If you ask him what data he has that would support that statistic you’ll get a song and dance. He has nothing to support that. A lot of the anti-Hispanic hate in this country is based on the same ignorance.

  6. Rick Bentley
    June 16, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    How could I have any statistics? Our government attacks anyone, like the City of Manassas, that attempts to gather objective data (such as how many people enrolling kids in schools were using the same addresses). You can suppress the numbers, but you can’t suppress the truth.

    There’s “between 8 and 20 million” illegal aliens in the country, that’s the extent of the “objective” knowledge.

  7. El Guapo
    June 16, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    So in other words Rick admits that he has nothing on which to base his assumption. That’s exactly what I thought. Thanks.

    I remember years ago I was working in an office. A cute little Salvadoran girl used to clean up in the evenings. She had been in the country six years and barely spoke a word of English. There were some other workers there also. They didn’t seem to know much English. They seemed like very nice people, and after meeting them I made a commitment to sit down and learn Spanish. I’m glad I did because there are a lot of very sweet Spanish speaking folks in our area.

    One person sees people speaking Spanish and assumes that they’re probably law breakers based on absolutely no evidence. Another takes the time to at least try to communicate with them and finds that they’re nice people and deep down not very different from Americans. I’ve always pondered what roads people have been down to cause them to come to such different conclusions about people.

  8. Juturna
    June 17, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Unfortunately we will never know if those workers were illegal or not – I think that’s what I recall from the video. I would be curious to know how this man would react the next time if he had been able to verify that those workers were legal. Would he keep hammering away looking for a gotcha or would he realize that his premise might be incorrect?

    It is not in falling that we fail, it is how we pick ourselves up.

  9. Moon-howler
    June 17, 2008 at 11:25 am

    El Guapo,

    Thank you for sharing your story. Most of my hispanic experiences have been good also. When they have not been good, the people of other races were acting equally bad. Jerks come in all ethnicities.

    I wonder how much of the bullsnot and blather I hear out of some mouths come from people who have actually had conversations with Hispanics?

  10. Rick Bentley
    June 17, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    Jerks come in all ethnicities. But teaching a whole underclass of people that our laws are jokes and they will be rewarded for breaking them is never a good idea.

  11. Diomedes
    June 17, 2008 at 10:18 pm

    Overall this guy is pretty ignorant. I can only imagine him calling the police on the spanish channels on tv!!! HAHAHA, “There are a group of illegals taking over the tv station speaking spanish only and they call their union UNIVISION!!” lol!!

    Also his comment on cheap labor was ignorant also. This guy did not study the economics of slavery, it was not cheap labor to have slaves, you have to feed, cloth, house, etc etc. Owners dicovered it was better to pay them a “minimum wage” and let them fend for themselves.
    Slavery was an issue of freedom, not economics.

  12. Elena
    June 17, 2008 at 11:18 pm

    Welcome Diomedes, thanks for joining the discussion.

  13. Rick Bentley
    June 18, 2008 at 7:22 am

    Diomedes your take on slavery has a grain of truth in it stated badly. In the end slavery became less and less effective as the slaves were disincentivized and learned not to work hard – they ended up being thought of having as little as a third the productivity rate of free men. (Helping to create the thought of blacks as inferior and helkping to justify the 3/5 compromise on voting). Still, it was cost-effective for some industries and the South’s economy depended on it. “Owners discovered” that it took a long bloody war to stop slavery.

    Slavery didn’t start or happen because someone wanted to be mean to someone else. It started because of economics.

    And I think the illegal immigration issue has a real parallel, because :

    1. It is going to create a real underclass in America, or more accurately swell the current underclass and make wage disparity more permanent. And many of those in this underclass will feel victimized by “race” or cultural background and resent what they see as second-class citizen status.

    2. It is primarily driven by employers’ desire to devalue labor costs.

    3. It is basically an abrogation on our part to expect citizens of other countries to service us – analogous to ancient Rome’s dependence on slave labor that helped secure their downfall

    4. It is a spiral that won’t end and will continue to devalue labor and do away with the notion of dignity to it – after the current wave of illegals settles in, another comes in and devalues THEIR wages even further, and after that another … wages continue to diminish and wage disparity in America grows and grows with each wave. Basically that’s the spiral we are and have been in.

  14. Rick Bentley
    June 18, 2008 at 7:26 am

    BTW I for one feel that those Spanish-language television stations should be taxed, there should be a surcharge on Spanish-language entertainment and the money put into Emergency Room compensation or ESOL funding for schools.

  15. Rick Bentley
    June 18, 2008 at 7:29 am

    The radio stations that play all that Spanish music should be more heavily regulated and taxed also.

  16. hello
    June 18, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    Wow Diomedes, I think your views on slavery are way wrong – “it was not cheap labor to have slaves” are you kidding me? Your joking right? So the only reason plantation owners in the south had slaves was because it “was an issue of freedom”?

    You said that slavery wasn’t cheap labor because “you have to feed, cloth, house” them. Are you serious!! Have you ever seen the conditions slaves lived in? You have obvisouly never been on a field trip as a kid or gone to a place as an adult where they had replicas of slave quarters. Have you ever seen pictures of their clothes, do you think they ate steak and drank beer every night? They were fed scraps and wore tattered rags. You need to seriously look into it.

  17. Elena
    June 19, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    Rick,
    Does this sound familiar?

    “There was very deep prejudice against Irish-Americans during the 19th century, especially as more immigrants came into the United States. Many Americans considered the Irish as dirty, stupid and lazy. Newspaper cartoonists often contributed to this image by drawing Irishmen as looking like apes with a jutting jaw and sloping forehead. Newspapers also wrote about Irish people using the derogatory term of “Paddy.”

    Americans also blamed the Irish immigrants for causing economic problems. They felt that the great numbers of Irish workers would put Americans out of work or lower wages. Americans felt that the increased number of people would mean taxes would rise due to additional needs for police, fire, health, sanitation, schools and poorhouses.

    Consequently, it became acceptable to discriminate against the Irish. Many job posters and newspaper ads ended with “No Irish Need Apply.” Hotels and restaurants may have had signs stating “No Irish Permitted in this Establishment.” In 1851-1852, railroad contractors in New York advertised for workers and promised good pay. When mostly Irish applied, the pay was lowered to fifty-five cents a day. When the workers protested, the militia was called in to force the men to accept. (M., p. 322)

    The Irish reacted to the conditions they were faced with in different ways. Many changed their accents, names and even religion to escape discrimination. Others turned to alcohol and crime. Still others turned to the Catholic Church. Since many of the priests and nuns were Irish, it provided a connection to home. It also helped the immigrants feel safe from prejudice and helped them learn American customs.”

    http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1990/5/90.05.07.x.html

  18. Rick Bentley
    June 20, 2008 at 9:11 am

    And the biggest difference Elena is that the Irish came lawfully, through a process which was documented and known by our Democratic government. The current wave of ILLEGAL immigrants are encouraged by a ruling class that skirts around Democracy and accountability by just simply not enforcing our laws. It’s as if the wealthy 100 years ago said “Hey these Irish guys work cheap. Let’s shut down Ellis Island and just let them all come in as many as want to, no screening, and we’ll tell our people we just can’t afford to screen them. Also let’s set up special rules for them to play by that will encourage them to come – let’s allow them to engage in identity theft and break rules at will and not even attempt to track them for criminal mischeif such as sex offenses or drunk driving – just let them skate and buy new IDs at the drop of a hat. Tell them we’ll pay for their health care too.”

    Also, the scale is not comparable.

  19. El Guapo
    June 20, 2008 at 10:03 am

    The fact is that we all know that it’s not just about whether someone is legal or not. I mean come one. The fact that people like Rick continue to pretend that it’s only about the rule of law is just a distraction from a discussion of the actual issues. If they were honest about it, then there might be some possibility of progress.

  20. Rick Bentley
    June 20, 2008 at 11:47 am

    The only progress I want is progress in deporting illegals and progress in convincing them there is no future here unless they come in legally. And indeed real progress is being made on that front.

    Amnesty made its great push in 2007 when the public was relatively undeucated about the issue. It failed and it’s a third rail in politics. Neither Obama nor McCain will ever get any AMnesty through Congress.

    We need no comprehensive solution. We are in fact progressing – meaningfully.

  21. Mackie
    June 20, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Rick Bentley:

    The only progress I want is progress in deporting illegals and progress in convincing them there is no future here unless they come in legally. And indeed real progress is being made on that front.

    Amnesty made its great push in 2007 when the public was relatively undeucated about the issue. It failed and it’s a third rail in politics. Neither Obama nor McCain will ever get any AMnesty through Congress.

    We need no comprehensive solution. We are in fact progressing – meaningfully.

    Rick, we’re actually regressing and the proof is how we’re damaging our economy. But we will continue in this direction, backwards, until the pain grows so great that we finally say ‘Enough, give ’em a pathway to citizenship’.

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