Nobody's Picked This Up

Apparently the disastrous outcome for Gov Walz from Tuesday's debate overshadowed a great deal of other news yesterday, not least the UK Daily Mail's story Kamala Harris's husband Doug Emhoff 'forcefully slapped ex-girlfriend for flirting with another man' in booze-fueled assault after date to star-studded gala:

Vice President Kamala Harris's husband assaulted his ex-girlfriend, three friends have told Dailymail.com.

The Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, 59, allegedly struck the woman in the face so hard she spun around, while waiting in a valet line late at night after a May 2012 Cannes Film Festival event in France.

One of her friends told DailyMail.com that the woman called him immediately after the incident, sobbing in her cab, and described the alleged assault.

The accounts and surrounding documentation gathered by the Daily Mail provide a revealing glimpse into Emhoff's lifestyle, and I think more importantly, why Kamala would find this guy a compatible match. I decided to see where this episode fit into Emhoff's timeline. According to Britannica,

In 2000 Emhoff cofounded the [law] firm Whitwell Jacoby Emhoff. . . . In 2006 Whitwell Jacoby Emhoff was acquired by Venable LLP, and Doug Emhoff became head of that firm’s Los Angeles branch and later manager of its West Coast operations.

. . . Emhoff married film producer Kerstin Mackin in 1992. The pair had two children, Cole Emhoff and Ella Emhoff, before divorcing in 2010. Three years later Doug Emhoff met Harris—then California’s attorney general—on a blind date, and they wed in 2014.

Venavble LLP is a major white-shoe law firm. Its expansion to the West Coast was an important move, and Emhoff was put in charge of their operations. Heavyweight dude, right? The Daily Mail has a lot to put the story in context, including this e-mail from "Jane", the alleged victim, to a friend regarding the hotel she and Emhoff stayed at during the Cannes Film Festival (click on the image for a ;arger copy):

The story puts this in moire contextt:

Jane's friends said she was given tickets by wealthy friends to go to the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) Gala Dinner, an elite charity auction filled with top celebrities and Hollywood executives, held on May 24, 2012 at the Hotel du Cap in Antibes, near Cannes in Southern France.

. . . The friends said Jane brought her then boyfriend, Emhoff, as a plus one.

One of Jane's friends, a top New York businessman, said he was at home getting ready for bed that night when he got an unexpected phone call from her.

'It was hard to hear her because she was sobbing,' he said. 'She told me she was with a guy and he hit her.

'It was very clear what she was telling me. She said she was with a guy, her date, she was at the Cannes Film Festival, and he hit her. She was in the car with the guy at the time.

. . . 'In later conversations, but pretty contemporaneous with that, she told me more about the guy,' he added.

'It was something like 3am. They were trying to get out of there and they both had been drinking. There was a gigantic line for taxis.

'[Jane] went up to one of the valet guys, offered him 100 Euros or whatever, to get to the head of the line. She told me she put her hand on his shoulder. Doug apparently thought that she was flirting, and came over and slapped her in the face.

. . . A second friend, another female New York attorney, said Jane told her about the alleged attack at the time – and said it came out of nowhere.

. . . 'I think she asked him 'what the f*** was that all about?' in the car, and the only thing she could really get out of him was that he thought she was hitting on the valet.

'[Jane] told me she was so embarrassed. She couldn't believe he is the person that he is, and that it turned into this trailer trash moment.

'It woke her up about the self-delusion she was having, explaining away the teacher [i.e., the nanny] story. She realized he was bad news. This was the first time she saw his ugly side.

This sort of thing isn't good for a prominent lawyer's reputation. According to the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct,

A lawyer's conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer's business and personal affairs.

As best I can tell, Emhoff's hard-partying, jet-setting lifestyle wouldn't be consistent with managing an important part of a white-shoe law firm's operations. He left Venable LLP in 2017 and became a litigation partner with DLA Piper, another white-shoe firm with Democrat connections. Married to Kamla in 2014, she was elected to the US Senate in 2016, and it would be hard not to interpret the move as connected to Harris's career, as well as growing dissatisfaction at Venable with Emhoff's escapades.

In fact, it looks like Emhoff didn't have a good reputation before his elevation to Second Dude:

This is a horrifying story. I will say that it matches with something I recently learned from two California individuals who know Emhoff fairly well and said his reputation for poor treatment of women was notorious in their circles. https://t.co/0UBAcs6j6d

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 2, 2024

A few commentators have3 raised the quesion of whether Kamala was ever vetted as a vice presidential choice, suggesting Biden's deal with James Clyburn to nominate a black woman for the job pre-empted any serious vetting process. It looks more and more to me as though it was a serious mistake not to look more closely into Emhoff beefore selecting Kamala.

Something Everyone Else Missed

I had several takeaways from last night's debate. Irrespective of who "won", I thought there was a key subliminal effect -- which one do you not want to watch on the evening news for the next four years? I think Walz was the overwhelming pick in that category, mostly because of how he acted when he wasn't the one talking. I had a hard time finding stills of this on the web, because I think everyone missed it.

While Vance spoke, Walz would screw his face into a frown with the corners of his mouth turned so exaggeratedly down, surrounded by his puffy cheeks, that he looked like a Muppet. In fact, looking around the web, this seems to be a common expression the guy has when his face is in repose.

Then, for the whole time Vance spoke, he'd whip out his pen and scribble furiously. You'd think that he was about to come up with the precise mot juste that he'd use deftly to skewer Vance in a perfect, well-timed riposte -- but it never happened. He'd just revert to the same old bloviation when his turn came around again.

I think he did this either because he decided, or his handlers told him, that this is what you're supposed to do on the middle school debate team, look like you're busily coming up with points to refute your opponent -- but tellingly, he never looked down at what he'd scribbled when it was his turn to speak and rebut. The scribbling was all for show.

The contrast with Vance couldn't have been greater. While Walz spoke, Vance would turn toward him, listening respectfully, only occasionally glancing over to the camera with a twinkle in his eye. There was a telling moment after the debate when Walz and his wife went out for a pizza, and a reeporter asked him to clarify what he meant when he said he was friends with school shooters.

Reporter: Can you clarify what you meant when you said you befriended school shooters?

Walz: *stares at pizza*

Reporter: Why did you say you were in Hong Kong when reports say you weren't?

Walz: *stares at pizza* pic.twitter.com/dIx0NFrqPr

— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) October 2, 2024

I have a feeling poor Walz knew what he was in for:

Kamala Harris “throws around F-bombs” and constantly berated her staff when she was California Attorney General, according to a shocking report.

An unearthed 2019 op-ed from professor Terry McAteer published in California newspaper The Union describes the “eye-opening” month his son Gregory spent as an intern for Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

McAteer, a Democrat with generational political ties to the party, claimed his son was subjected to a “side of Kamala Harris which the general public does not know”.

“Harris vocally throws around ‘F-bombs’ and other profanity constantly in her berating of staff and others,” McAteer wrote.

The post-mortem in the Harris camp is going to look something like this:

Vance couldn’t believe his luck. The Republican vice-presidential nominee was only too pleased to play the game that he and the governor were commonsensical, bipartisan people. Walz and Vance kept saying how much they “actually” agreed with each other on housing, jobs and support for families. It was sweet, in a way, to see a Democrat and a Republican spar lightly with each other, harking back to a more gentle era B.T. – Before Trump. But, “C’mon man, give me a break!” Joe Biden might have roared, if he were still awake. There is too much at stake.

. . . Then, in the final minutes, Walz nailed Vance on his willingness to sacrifice democracy for his boss. With any luck this will be the soundbite of the night. “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” Walz asked. “Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance dodged. “I think you’ve got a really clear choice on who is going to honour that democracy, and who is going to honour Donald Trump,” Walz concluded. But by then, a supremely confident Vance was calling his new buddy by his first name.

But the bottrom line isn't who said what, or who had the best zinger. The bottom line is that the public overwhelmingly decided it didn't want Walz, the frowning Muppet, on the evening news for the next four years.

Kamala has already signaled that poor Walz is going to be the scapegoat here -- but I don't think she ever seriously wanted to win the election. She wanted a few months of five-star hotel rooms, fawning sycophants, and hobnobbing with billionaires, and that would be plenty. Then she'll have the ghostwritten book deal, the talk show circuit, the six-figure speaking fees, the parties in the Hamptons, and she can blame it all on poor Tim.

She Knows They're Losing, And She's Setting Walz Up As The Scapegoat

Monday, Kamala made a remarkable effort to put distance between herself and Tampon Tim:

Vice President Kamala Harris revealed Monday that she suffered from insomnia after President Biden endorsed her as his successor — and that she was sleep-deprived the morning she picked her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Harris, 59, told “All The Smoke” hosts Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson that she made her “gut” decision to select Walz after being unable to sleep much the night before, waking up early that Tuesday in Washington and using cooking to calm her mind.

“From the time that the president called me and told me he wasn’t running, I mean, it’s just like everything was in speedy, speedy motion, and I was not sleeping so well,” Harris told the basketball stars, who both played for the Harris-supported Golden State Warriors.

“And that one morning I just, I mean, I had, I don’t know, a few hours’ sleep — and I, you know, I like to sleep. I just got up,” she said. “I was like — so I just went out and got a pork roast and started marinating it.”

One thing that doesn't ring true is the bit aabout marinating the pork roast -- you can bet she and Emhoff have a private chef. But the business of being sleep-deprived? Remember yesterday's post and the quote about ". . . she comes up to the students she mentioned her score to and started venting about how she was distracted and didn't have her coffee and this and that"? That sounds just like what she said to lay off the blame for Walz onto sleep deprivation.

What this does suggest, though, is that she's paying attention to what's being said, at least about Walz. Ever since she announced her choice, the consensus has been this, happy-face aside:

In the context of the Electoral College, Harris’ choice could backfire. While Walz’s Minnesota is safely Democratic, Shapiro presides over the most important swing state in the 2024 election. Although many pundits see Walz as especially appealing to rural and working-class voters, the evidence suggests otherwise. Compared to Biden’s 2020 performance in Minnesota, Walz received the same share of the vote overall (52%), and he did no better than Biden among rural and small-town voters, working-class voters, and Republican identifiers while running four points behind Biden among Independents.

. . . It’s hard to believe that Shapiro’s presence on the ticket wouldn’t have helped Harris in a state she must win. She will have to hope that Walz’s midwestern appeal will end up putting Pennsylvania as well as Michigan and Wisconsin in her column. But if she loses Pennsylvania by a hair, and with it her Electoral College majority, she will have cause to regret her decision.

As of now, respectable polls have Trump ahead in Pennsylvania, and the Michigan Democrat Senate candidate, Elissa Slotkin, has acknowledged that Kamala is "under water" there. It's become pretty plan that any boost Walz was going to give the campaign in those states hasn't materialized, while by last week, according to Rasmussen, Kamala had only a 3% lead over Trump in Minnesota, so Walz isn't even helping her in his home state.

But there's another puzzling wrinkle: Afer Kamala was nominated, it was agreed that her clearest path to an Electoral College victory would be to secure Pennmsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- although even Nate Silver was saying she had to win all three. As these prospects have faded, a second potential path emerged involving North Carolina and Georgia.

But wait a moment -- didn't Hurricane Helene just deal severe blows to those specific states? They're on everyone's list of the battlegrounds, and Trump has already been in Valdosta, GA, personally distributing aid and meeting with figures like Franklin Graham:

Trump, who as president faced criticism for his response to Hurricane Maria, on Sunday criticized Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for not being in Washington over the weekend and not immediately traveling to the storm-ravaged region. He accused Biden of “sleeping” at his beach house, suggesting he was not focused on the recovery effort, and he attacked Harris for fundraising and campaigning in California and Nevada.

Trump on Monday traveled to Georgia to receive a briefing on the damage and distribute relief supplies.

So far, Kamala has issued no definite plans to visit the affected areas. This is especially puzzling, since North Carolina and Georgia are specifically cited as key to Kamala's Plan B for the Electoral College, while Trump, fully aware of the free media he gets from personal visits, is making hay in just those markets.

I'm getting the impression that Walz himself is losing interest as well.

Tim Walz gets heckled by students at the Michigan - Minnesota game

“TRUMP 2024 BABY!!!” pic.twitter.com/fOU7HrEeot

— Old Row (@OldRowOfficial) September 29, 2024

We'll have to see how this shakes out after tronight's debate, but I'm beginning to get a sense that the Harris campaign, and Kamala in particular, have decided not to waste much further effort. In fact, I think they're counting on Walz to blow the debate so they can put the blame on him.

"Honestly? I Believe She Was Born That Way."

Trump's manner in this clip isn't his normal bombast. He pauses and gives something of a personal aside: "Honestly? I believe she was born that way." He goes on, with clearly deliberate words: "There's something wrong with Kamala, and I just don't know what it is, but there is definitely something missing -- and you know what? Every. Body. Knows it."

Trump isn't mincing words here, he's the classic truthteller, Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye, James Dean playing Caleb Trask in East of Eden. This reminded me of the much fact-checked claim that Kamala scored a 78 in a Howard University IQ test (click on the image for a larger version):

Even though the fact-checkers insist there's no way to verify this claim, and anyhow she went on to law school and passed the bar exam, two statements ring true: "Then she started laughing like a psychopath. I thought there is no way this bitch graduates."

No way she graduates -- and certainly no way she gets a law degree and passes the bar. But strangely enough, it happened, and she's laughed like a psychopath ever since. But as we come up to the vice presidential debate, it's worth revisiting the thinking in this facebook post from September 12:

This paragraph farther down, I think, is a suggestion of how even the Democrats view Kamala's prospects:

Walz['s] selection shows just how DOA even the other Democrats believe Harris' campaign to be. Of course they will never publicly admit they believe she's going to lose, and likely lose badly, so they will publicly say the opposite, but not a one of them was going to hitch their political futures to what they believe to be a dead horse.

This is exactly what I thought of Walz selection fom the start. I think it's begun to sink in even on Walz himself that he's been seen as a joke fom the start, and this is likely to come out in the debate:

Tim Walz is telling people he’s just as nervous about facing JD Vance as he was the Sunday afternoon in August when he warned Kamala Harris in his running mate interview that he was a bad debater.

Maybe more nervous, according to multiple people who’ve spoken to him.

And the pressure is even higher, when for the first time in modern campaign history, the vice presidential debate Tuesday is likely to be the last marquee event before Election Day. With many voters still saying they don’t know enough about Harris, it could be up to Walz to help convince them to trust a vice president he barely knew himself before she picked him.

Meanwhile,

President Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America, will visit Valdosta, Georgia to receive a briefing on the devastation of Hurricane Helene, facilitate the distribution of relief supplies, and deliver remarks to the press on Monday, September 30, 2024, at 2:00 p.m. EDT.

In contrast,

Vice President Kamala Harris is under pressure to visit states ravaged by Hurricane Helene, as former President Donald Trump's campaign has said he plans to visit storm-battered Georgia on Monday.

. . . Trump has been quick to announce his plans to visit storm-ravaged Valdosta in Georgia and has criticized the Biden administration's response to the hurricane, accusing the president of "sleeping" at his beach house.

. . . Harris plans to visit the affected region "as soon as it is possible without disrupting emergency response operations," the unnamed official said, per Reuters.

Something's definitely missing.

The Deepest Dive Yet Into The Springfield Haitians

I've at least got to give Reak Ckear Politics some credit for running this piere by Benjamin Roberts, associate editor at something called IM-1776, Heartland Betrayed: Down the Corruption Rabbit Hole: On the ground in Springfield, Ohio. Roberts spent a week in Springfield knocking on doors, talking to residents, and trying to interview local officials. as well as other business and NGO leadership.

The result confirms the picture that's beguin to emerge from my own posts on Springfield, Aurora, and Charleroi:

My investigation discovered a long rotten beam extending from the Mayor down to NGOs, pastors, corporations, and local mediocrities looking to make a fast buck. Everyone is on the take. And Springfield is not an outlier. It is a standard example of local partnerships with federal and corporate resettlement programs working together to profit themselves.

The perverse incentive structures of these institutions makes them incapable of resisting population replacement. The citizens are simply not lucrative enough to leave alone. As things stand, nothing will stop without concerted intervention. The charities, churches, and city officials in Springfield are alien officials ruling over a subject population, robber-barons without charisma or mystique, fishing for pennies in the sewers they have made of their hometowns.

His account sheds more light on local bad actors like Mayor Rob Rue, slumlord George Ten, and sweatshop employer Ross McGregor, but it also makes plain that they're operating within a much larger, shadowy structure of federal and state subsidies. also enabled by churches, including the USCCB, and respectable NGOs like United Way. This will take a lot more investigation:

Federal monies are disbursed through contracts, grants, direct payments, loans and other channels in which entities like the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services are pass-through bodies. Executive Director David Smiddy of the Warder Literacy Center [an NGO] admitted to being funded by this department, but more granular details are hard to determine. Within a labyrinth of organizations, obfuscation is the norm. Ohio Department of Development. Ohio Housing Finance Agency. Springfield Metropolitan Housing Authority. Minority Business Services. Neighborhood Impact Division… The names go on and on. Entities feed into other entities to create a twisted maze.

Roberts brings up the specific question of how the Haitians can get cars, especially when they're often unlicensed and apparently don't know how to drive.

[A] local tow company owner is charting losses of $5,000 a month as a direct result of Haitian crashes. At first glance, one would imagine this to be a boon for his business. However, because Haitians are unlicensed, insurance does not pay out to the owner. Furthermore, almost none of the drivers return to salvage their vehicles, and as a result, due to regulations, tow company lots fill up.

. . . Almost all of the Haitians apparently drive Honda Odysseys. They all bank with PNC, many have cars licensed by Trust Auto, and the most common insurance provider is Acceptance. Who is facilitating this? Who is filing the paperwork and opening these accounts for a community that can’t speak English? So far, I have not been able to uncover much in that direction. It is too peculiar to be assumed to be a coincidence, however.

Another question is who pays the rent on the slum units owned by Mayhor Rue and George Ten:

Rob Rue is the owner of Littleton Properties of Springfield LLC., which owns six rental properties in Springfield. Going door-to-door, I confirmed that at least four of these properties are rented to Haitian migrants. These tenants are not just nuclear families, but multi-generational households including anywhere from ten to fifteen people crammed into one half of a duplex. It is not clear who is paying their rent.

What's been suggested in other reports I've seen is that the slumlords aren't renting by the uinit, as would happen in a conventional lease or tenancy agreement, but they're being paid directly by some outside agency on a per-person basis, which encourages overcrowding as well as encouraging the slumlords to drive out conventional per-unit tenants. Roberts refers to a local pastor and homeless advocate whom he identifies only as Barron:

I interviewed a recently homeless woman, one of many who frequents the soup kitchen and a camp Barron services (comprised almost entirely of recent homeless driven out by rising rents), whose husband holds down a factory job. Her and her friends told me that locals are “pushed out to remodel, rents go from $800 to $1800, and then they move Haitians there.”

A particular problem is the churches, which appear to benefit from federal money for Haitians at the expense of neglecting the native-born poor of the community:

[T]he local government may actually be the least compromised of all the bad actors operating in Springfield. The churches, entrusted to care for their neighbors, have decided to interpret this edict by siding with recent arrivals.

An example is the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a Catholic voluntary organization which issued a press release in response to citizen backlash against their role in the migrant crisis in which they acknowledged that “SVdP volunteers and interpreter[sic]/navigators assist these neighbors [migrants] with tools for independent living. SVdP conduct(s) legal pro-bono immigration clinics. Whenever possible, SVdP navigators help Haitians seek waivers of… application fees.”

Meanwhile a new epidemic of homelessness is emerging as a result of skyrocketing rents, rapacious landlord behavior, and general impoverishment. There are plenty of grandmothers in Springfield who could use a navigator at the DMV, and poor Americans who could use a fee waiver or pro-bono legal assistance, but SVdP has different priorities.

This is clearly an important contribution to coverage of thr quasi-legal immigrant invasion, but it actually provides just a set of pointers for even more detailed investigation.

What About The Haitians In Charleroi. PA?

The odd thing about the Haitians in Temporary Protective Status is that wherever they turn up, there is one standard corporate-media news story. Charleroi, PA, a most unlikely place for this to happen, is another instance, per CBS News:

The influx of immigrants in Charleroi has divided residents over whether or not they are a welcome addition to their community.

Former president Donald Trump put a spotlight on the topic during a rally last week in Arizona, sharing how the population of Haitian migrants in the town had grown by 2,000%.

"Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it's not so beautiful now," Trump said.

KDKA-TV first reported in March how we were told the immigrant population in Charleroi has grown by more than 2000% in the last two years. The majority of students in the local school district who need assistance learning English are from Haiti. The district has spent $400,000 on ELL teachers and an interpreter. Trump touched on that impact during his speech.

We see all the right notes, Trump stirring up trouble, residents divided, strain on resources, many locals deplorable:

"You can't even walk through the town without being next to them or them pestering you about something," life-long Charleroi resident Raymond Pappas said of the immigrants.

When asked why he had a problem standing next to immigrants, Pappas said, "Well it's not really a problem it's just that they make you feel uncomfortable."

Pappas is not alone in his belief. Off-camera, a number of neighbors told us they were either reluctant or refused to go downtown because of the immigrant population. Some said they were planning to leave the city soon, while others said the immigrants should go back to where they came from.

But the local politicians and law enforcement officials beg to disagree. Imagine that, sounds just like Springfield, OH!

Kristin R. Hopkins, the president of the Charleroi Borough, said the borough expresses "deep concern" over the representation of their community's challenges.

"Trump chose to exploit our town for political purposes, using divisive rhetoric to unfairly target the Haitian immigrant community," Hopkins wrote.

She says the city has seen a population rise for the first time in decades. She says Haitian immigrants have been "unjustly scapegoated" for many of Charleroi's problems.

"Rather than acknowledging the real economic issues the town is facing, some have chosen to unfairly target the Haitian community, judging the entire group based on misinformation and fear of outsiders," Hopkins said, adding welcoming immigrants is part of the town's history and that the focus should be about solutions, like what should be down about the job loss at the Anchor-Hocking plant.

MSN brings in another stock character, Charleroi Regional Police Chief Chad Zelinsky, who denies the Hatians are a problem:

Mr. Zelinsky is adamant that he and his team have seen no increase in crime in the half-decade during which the town’s population has swelled by up to 50% due to immigration — largely from Haiti, but also from West African and Asian countries. In fact, the chief compares today’s situation favorably to a few years ago, when opioid-addicted “zombies” were more common.

And oddly enough, just like in Springfield, he's backed up by another local pol:

Former Charleroi Mayor Nancy Ellis went further. She described Charleroi’s immigrants as model neighbors — more reliable, in fact, than the town’s long-time residents. They’re first in line to pay taxes, she said. As if on cue, while we chatted multiple Haitians dutifully showed up to pay parking fines.

Most striking of all, Ms. Ellis said (and others confirmed), this year the town’s immigrants organized clean-up efforts for Charleroi’s Memorial Day celebrations: “No white people showed up.”

So the story seems to be, just like in Springfield, the town fathers -- er, parents -- chose to bring in a new proletariat to replace the old one, and the new proletariat is turning out to be better than the old deplorables. who are lazy, ungrateful, racist, drug-addled zombies.

But there's another narrarive lurking in the background:

How did [the Haitians] end up in Charleroi? It is, indeed, implausible that they chose to come to the small Pennsylvania town on their own. This isn’t the result of people coming to America and ending up in a town where they know somebody.

Rather, what you discover in listening to people on the ground is that they end up in Charleroi—or countless other American cities like the high-profile case of Springfield, Ohio—because of a sophisticated operation that involves local businesses that want low-wage labor, “staffing agencies” that not only have access to migrant labor but also frequently source them housing and transportation to the job sites, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that help connect the staffing agencies with newly arrived migrants.

It is not surprising that a sophisticated sourcing ecosystem would arise to connect low-wage migrants with employers needing low-wage workers. Indeed, such a system is a necessity because America has adopted—on a bipartisan basis—what we might call the “Jobs Americans Won’t Do” theory of labor policy. The theory argues that our economy is filled with tens of millions of jobs that are inherently low productivity and, therefore, too low paying to attract Americans, necessitating the importation of a foreign workforce to do them for us.

. . ., “They say ‘we can’t find people to work.’ Well, that’s a half truth,” Andy Armbruster, a lifelong native of Charleroi said. “There’s people who would work if you paid them the going wage for the work. But they want to pay less and so they ended up getting involved with these agencies that bring in these workers.”

. . . [A] Charleroi business owner invited CBS News into his factory to see the work being done by migrant workers. Though only a few seconds of video is shown in the CBS report, the main task one sees workers doing in the video is manually moving bowls of food from one conveyor belt onto another. It’s not difficult to imagine automation playing a greater role in that process.

The piece argues that

a job traditionally done by low-wage or slave labor can be transformed by cutting-edge technological innovation at the center of 21st century great power competition.

. . . Productivity increases won’t change the nature of every low-skill job. But in a higher-wage economy with greater income to pay for low-skill services, even the service sector sees its wages go up. That’s why it was possible 50 years ago for a bartender and a maid to own their own home, raise their children in a safe neighborhood, and, ultimately, retire with dignity. Is our economy providing that same opportunity today?

Immigration policy is not just a question of economics. It has tremendous implications on our culture, our national mores, and our ability to provide dignity and basic services to our citizens. What is being done to these communities is a tragedy, and it is an avoidable one.

But there's another parallel that goes unspoken in this piece: it mentions the "staffing agencies" amd NGOs (though not the government subsidies) that move the immigrants into unlikely places in the US -- but at least in Springfield, local politicians are apparently either profiting directly by renting to the immigrants, or they're getting payoffs to enable the situation, or both. The story doesn't get that far with Charleroi, but I have at least a feeling that something's hinky, as it is in Springfield.

Springfield, OH And Gov DeWine

I was intrigued to read this piece:

The GOP governor of Ohio and many pro-migration media outlets insist the federal government’s huge Haitian migration into the city of Springfield is legal.

“They are there legally,” Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a September 20, op-ed for the New York Times. “I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Yesterday I linked to a story that refers to Haitians, Venezuelans, and others as "parole migrants". I've been calling them "quasi-legal". One of the programs by which they're in the country is Termporary Protected Status, which accordinbg to Wikipedia

is given by the United States government to eligible nationals of designated countries, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who are present in the United States. In general, the Secretary of Homeland Security may grant temporary protected status to people already present in the United States who are nationals of a country experiencing ongoing armed conflict, an environmental disaster, or any temporary or extraordinary conditions that would prevent the foreign national from returning safely and assimilating into their duty [sic]. Temporary protected status allows beneficiaries to live and, in some cases, work in the United States for a limited amount of time. As of March 2022, there are more than 400,000 foreign nationals in Temporary Protected Status.

The entry goes on to say,

The 2021 United States Supreme Court case Sanchez v. Mayorkas affirmed that temporary protected status only granted legal status to remain in the country and was not equivalent to lawful admission into the country. Thus, those immigrants that had entered the country unlawfully but had received temporarily protected status are ineligible to apply for permanent resident status simply through virtue of their temporary protected status.

Thus Gov DeWine's remarks are misleading -- the Haitians here under Temporary Protected Status aren't "legal migrants". They're here under a temporary provision that can be revoked any time, for instance, if a new administration declares that Haiti is not a country for which its migrants are eligible. This raises the puzzling question of why Gov DeWine, a Republican, supports the presence of so many Haitians in Springfield and appears to be so sensitive when the issue comes up in media.

Although there's less documentation for Haitians eating pets and protected waterfowl, troubling incidents have definitely come to light:

🚨🪿 Springfield, Ohio:

𝗜 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗻 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗿𝘂𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗛𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 “𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁” 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹𝘀.

“We had a… pic.twitter.com/9hBfRealU6

— Tayler Hansen (@TaylerUSA) September 13, 2024

Haitians causing traffic accidents in Springfield have also been a widely reported problem, most recently here:

Springfield has attracted national media attention in recent weeks over reports that some of the Haitians were stealing and eating pets and waterfowl, but residents say a more pressing issue has been their reckless driving.

. . . One Springfield resident estimated that there are four to five accidents a day caused by the Haitian immigrants, who are somehow able to drive around town without understanding basic traffic laws.

. . . In December, Springfield grandmother Kathy Heaton was struck and killed by a Haitian immigrant driving with an expired license while she was collecting her garbage cans. Prosecutors declined to charge the 38-year-old driver, the Post reported.

. . . [Neighboring Tremont City, OH Police Chief Chad] Duncan told the Blaze that the immigrants are often not licensed to operate vehicles, but Springfield appears to be protecting them from facing any real consequences for their reckless driving.

. . . Duncan told Rosas about a recent traffic stop in Tremont City involving a Haitian national going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone.

“He didn’t even have a license,” he said, adding that it was the second time over a two-week period that he pulled the driver over so he had the individual’s car towed.

Duncan told Rosas that he didn’t think Springfield police would have towed the vehicle in that instance, and speculated why he thought that was the case.

“If you get two misdemeanors, you are subject to be deported,” he explained.

In this post, I covered how Springfield's Republican mayor and others in the city establishment are profiting from the Haitians by renting slum housing to them and employing them in sweatshops. Chief Duncan speculates here that the Springfield police have been told not to arrest the Haitians for traffic offenses, because it could get them deported, which would cut into the incomes of the mayor and his cronies. This would also explain why the Springfield police chief has been so quick to minimize the Haitian problem with the media.

On September 12, I noted that once Trump surfaced the Sprinfgfield Haitian problem at the debate, Gov DeWine suddenly sent the Ohio State Highway Patrol to Springfield to help solve the traffic problem -- but Chief Duncan of the neighboring town noted another part of the story:

Duncan also said that his access to Springfield’s police radio frequency was cut off after the city was thrust into the media spotlight over the Haitian influx.

“We were able to hear them on the radio. They have decided to go silent. We don’t know what’s going on in the city,” Duncan said. “That happened the day they brought the State Troopers in to help them out.”

When asked why he believes Springfield Police shut off communications, Duncan speculated that it was to avoid accountability for their actions.

“When no one can hear what you’re saying, they don’t know what you’re doing so they don’t have to answer for it,” he explained.

So what's up with Gov DeWine? A problem like the huge quantities of immigrants coming in under Temporary Protected Status wouldn't exist unless powerful people wanted it. In the case of Springfield, these powerful people are Republicans, and they have the Republican governor covering their backs.