Mark America

Rich Lowry, writing for NRO Sunday, posted a bit of an exchange between Chuck Schumer’s staff and Marco Rubio’s staff on the haggling over the immigration reform bill.  In that exchange, the Rubio aide, purportedly said:

“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you can’t obviously discuss that publicly.”

I’d like to address this sentiment, but for the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that Lowry’s reporting as well as the source materials he’s relying upon are accurate.  Rather than direct my ire at Senator Rubio for employing such a dolt, or assuming that he shares the twisted reasoning of his staffer, I simply wish to direct this to the staffer in question:

You take a salary month after month, and month after month, the American worker is the poor rube paying it.  The “American worker” is defined by men and women of all ages and races, including those who have been naturalized as citizens.  To say that the “American worker can’t cut it” is the most intensely disdainful remark you could make about the people your boss was elected to serve!  The people who keep the lights on in your office are the American worker.  You defame the people who get up each morning and who beat you to the Starbucks, who also seem to “cut it” as they’re making your coffee.  The people who keep the traffic flowing as you make your way to work seem to “cut it” as you move on down the road.  The poor bastards who keep the lights burning certainly “cut it.”

You and your boss along with the ninety-odd other dolts and their staffs seem to have no problem with the American worker “cutting it” when it comes to spending their money, and spending their future earnings.  No, I suspect the American worker “cuts it” just fine in that context.  Your boss wasn’t elected to represent the Chamber of Commerce or to take their position on the immigration bill, but then again, maybe he was. True, there is no presumption that we’re all star performers, except when it’s time to pay the nation’s bills, but one would think that you’d have the decency to consider them before the interests of the Chamber of Commerce.

Do you want to know what really doesn’t “cut it?” I’ll be happy to tell you, on behalf of all the men and women who will have done more before 8 o’clock this morning than you will have done by day’s end: Foolish, arrogant staff to elected or appointed government officials who along with their bosses hold the American people in disdain don’t cut it!  In short, you don’t cut it.  I can understand why you wouldn’t want your remarks repeated in public.  I can understand why Senator Rubio’s office doesn’t want NRO disseminating the remarks. As reported, what your remarks reveal about the sentiment of those in Washington DC who are pushing this immigration reform boondoggle is that the American people at large don’t “cut it” in your view.

Screw you.  The very idea that you would take such a position in an argument against the American worker should tell voters everything they need to know about you, and about your boss.  It surely didn’t take the space of four years for your boss to become captured by the machine, of which you are a part.  The truth may be that he had been captive all along, and ultimately, he bears responsibility for employing you. We’re going to need to see what we can do about that, although I have no doubt that even if dismissed, you’ll wind up working for a lobbying firm, perhaps arguing on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce that the American worker “can’t cut it.”

In my nearly half-century, I have watched the American worker “cut it” under the most egregious of conditions at times, and while it is always true that there may be some person in some job who is not quite up to it, the fact is that the American worker has managed to create trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of wealth during that span, much of which you and your boss and those with and before him have squandered.  Naturally, in a free market, you will get only as good as you give in most cases, but that’s a two-way street.  Over the last decade, costs have risen for businesses, but for consumers, they have risen even more.  How much has the average American’s wage increased?

There is nothing wrong with the American worker that the free market can’t fix, but sadly, you wish to tinker with the free market to the degree it still exists in the United States by changing the rules, in this case seeking to flood the market with millions of new employees.  All of this is because your real bosses – the people for whom you work while we who “can’t cut it” pay you – want bargain prices for labor and because your opposites on the political spectrum want more votes.  The truth is that you’re all a gang of criminals.  What this Immigration Reform bill will do to the American people, particularly the American worker, and to the American polity is and should be considered a criminal act.  I view it as treason.  How well does treason pay in Washington DC?  Apparently, quite well, with the tax-payer footing the bill.

It’s finally time the American worker taught you just a little bit about who runs this frigging show.  You wizards sit there in Washington DC, looking out over the land, imagining yourselves as captains of industries you could not build, you could not grow, and you certainly could not staff.  You dispense with our liberties and property and our wealth as though it had been yours to do by right, but when there are budget shortfalls because you spend our wealth like there’s no tomorrow, you undoubtedly conclude it’s because we, the American people, simply “can’t cut it.”

Here’s a little tip, and I hope you and your boss and all your analogs all over Capitol Hill will understand: This immigration reform bill stinks, and if you pass it, we who allegedly “can’t cut it” are going to send your asses home.  If there’s one thing to be learned in all of this, it is that we have left it in your hands far too often and without the oversight your intransigence has earned, in large measure because in the crippled economy is making it increasingly difficult to “cut it” as we pay our monthly bills while still funding your bloated salary.

“Can’t cut it?”  This comes from a staff member of an institution that has done nothing in more than five years to substantially relieve the burden on the American worker.  This comes from a glorified civil servant who enjoys the best benefits the government offers.  This sorry notion is born in a city that disposes of Americans and their wealth without the first thought to the morality of having done so.  This idea is the byproduct of a select club of people who cannot(or will not) balance a budget, fix the welfare-state bearing down on the American worker, or even protect the rights of the average American who simply wants to go about his life and business in peace.

This legislation was crafted as a compromise between big labor and big business, neither of which give a damn about the American worker. Sir, what doesn’t “cut it” is your legislation. What doesn’t “cut it” is your point of view.  That which doesn’t “cut it” is your deal-making with or on behalf of everybody under the sun except those who pay the freight on this whole mess.  What doesn’t “cut it” is the manner in which you so recklessly dismiss and disregard the hopes, the dreams, and the tireless exertions of the American worker. What doesn’t “cut it” is how you talk about us when we’re not in the room, which is most of the time, because we’re too busy trying to “cut it” in this mess of an economy you have made.  That doesn’t cut it.  You don’t cut it.

There’s a good deal more I could say to this staffer and all those like him on Capitol Hill who look with disdain or outright contempt upon the American people and the American worker, but most of it is not fit to print.  I dearly hope the American people will wake up to what this latest amnesty attempt will do to their lives and to their country, but I know that under these economic conditions, they’re awfully busy trying to “cut it.”