Mike On!

By G. Michael "Mike" German

The latest issues as they arise - and where Mike stands on them. Check back frequently - this section will be updated often!

• IRAQ! - OTHERS ROLL OVER AND PLAY DEAD! (Quotes taken from Congressional Record)

Despite publicly promising to "match [her] credentials with anyone, anytime," the incumbent refuses to debate any of her challengers so the voters may know her views on other subjects as well. Maybe she doesn't have any; all she does when she isn't giving dictators even more breaks is fundraise, fundraise and fundraise, making Gary Davis look like a kid running a corner Kool-Aid stand. Apart from that, and her throwing up obstacles to bringing Saddam Hussein to justice, we'll probably never really know what she stands for. Already she's eyeing higher office, though she has yet to win the contest in which we are now engaged.

Consider her remarks leading up to her vote against holding Hussein accountable, which reveal whom she trusts and whom she does not. "I rise in opposition to the resolution on national security grounds," she declaimed, citing her experience "on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was one of my top priorities," but failing to explain either her lack of success in doing so or the Nixonian basis for her beliefs. "The clear and present danger that our country faces is terrorism," she continued, stating what every American already knows and understands. But her confusion and mistrust of Americans and our leaders were evident: "I say flat out that unilateral use of force without first exhausting every diplomatic remedy and other remedies and making a case to the American people will be harmful to our war on terrorism."

The case against terrorism and Saddam Hussein was closed over a decade ago; what's occurred since has been a series of post-trial motions and appeals by the criminal defendants in that action as they continue to commit crimes against humanity while out on a bond of borrowed time. Americans need no new evidence in the case, the most striking of which was marked and admitted into the court of world opinion on September 11, 2001. Every diplomatic remedy, and whatever others might have been meant, has been exhausted over the past eleven years and things have only worsened as Saddam consolidated his power and restocked his terrible arsenal of death, disease and destruction. Iraq and terror are one and the same, juntos y revueltos to paraphrase the Spanish proverb, and arguing over which poses the clear and present danger is as much a waste of precious time as it is of a tired and irrelevant cliche.

But if this Congresswoman doesn't trust the President and the American people to know when to say enough and take action, whom does she trust? The answer comes from her own statements. "If we initiate an attack and he thought he was an extremist or otherwise, what is the likelihood in response to our attack that Saddam Hussein would use chemical and biological weapons," she asked in confused and worried tones. According to a letter she waved from CIA Chief George Tenet, the answer was, "Pretty high, if we initiate the attack," and she took both him at his word and fright from what his words said to her.

So our own elected representative will not trust the American people, their President or their Armed Forces to take the initiative that others have set aside and bring Saddam Hussein to justice, but she will trust him to make good his threat to use weapons of mass destruction if we proceed against him. That, for her, is reason not to act, just as it was for Neville Chamberlain when he waved a piece of paper proclaiming "peace in our time" after handing Czechoslovakia its death warrant.

Only madmen or those ignorant of its horrors delight in war; only fools or those who are afraid of war avoid it at any price, even when national or global security would be prejudiced in delaying it. Those who voted against the Iraqi war resolution likened their doing so to noble enterprises of the past. But their tired and trumped up arguments showed nothing but ignorance of the past. To Santayana's admonition that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," should be added the codicil that those who have not learned its lessons cannot be trusted to lead us into the future.

• ENRON AROUND THE BALANCE SHEET

But not everyone is so motivated to require direct, open and honest accounting of companies' worth. As reported in the WSJournal, (8-16-02, at A4), the leading House Democrat fundraiseuse/politicienne with ties to high tech firms defends current treatment of options - which is no treatment at all. "'We don't want to be the scapegoat,' S.F.'s representative tells a gathering of New Democrats in Silicon Valley," as she opposes changes to Federal Accounting Standards Board rules which would mandate listing options as expenses.

Seems like everything New Democrat is old again. If corporate officers can't be held responsible - or "scapegoated" as Ms. Moneybags sees it - who should be? Their thousands of laid-off employees? Their stockholders? Why not just throw it all on the taxpayers? If not a "New Democrat" deal, it's certainly a familiar one.

As a lawyer who successfully prosecuted business fraud and unfair practices cases in San Francisco on behalf of beleaguered homeowners, Mike knows the value of complete corporate disclosure and will actively work for whatever changes are necessary in federal regulations to make companies provide full and accurate accounts of their activities. Those that do so voluntarily will be commended, but those that have to be dragged to do so should, like the politicians who protect them, be investigated and, where necessary, prosecuted to the full extent of the law, whether criminally for fines and restitution or civilly for damages, costs and fees.

That's part of what being a law and order candidate is all about.

• IT'S WHAT AGAIN, STUPID?

Now we're hearing again from Democrats, including our own Congresswoman/economist (read, fundraiser) who recently received a grade of "D" from the National Foreign Trade Council for her dismal voting record, who are still smarting over the President's firmness in dealing with terrorism post-9/11, that the economy needs attention. Well of course it does, it ALWAYS does! But first things first, folks, and the first thing we need to do is reset the foundation for a healthy economy, here and globally, by making it safe to do business in the U.S. and elsewhere. Until the war on terrorism is won - and that means until Saddam Hussein is ousted from power - there will be no security in doing business and the economy, ALL economies, will continue to languish in uncertainty. So to those who say "It's the economy, stupid!" a more meaningful and up-to-date reply would be, "No, this time it's the war!" Let's get it on and over with, if needs we must as it appears we must, and our economy will recover just as strongly as it did the last - and every other prior - time we faced this dilemma. Then, at least, the Democrats will have to come up with a new line.

• H1B VISAS - THE NEED FOR REFORM NOW!

Like so many government-engineered social programs, doubtless the H1B and L1 visa programs were undertaken with the best of intentions. However, even their foundations seem ill-laid. From the materials I have studied, I doubt that a serious shortage of tech, or any other sort of, workers ever actually existed. Instead, the figures appear to have been manipulated by corporations looking to lower labor costs by importing cheap labor, exporting their jobs outside the US to take advantage of cheap labor, or a combination of both schemes. In some cases, to my disgust, I was disappointed to see some corporations hint at threatening to take their business elsewhere if not given what they perceive as the "right" to engage in either of these employment practices proving so disastrous to American citizen workers, whether native born or naturalized. Indeed, naturalized American citizens are just as adversely affected by these abuses as are native ones.

The privilege of doing business in America under a corporate charter and with the benefits of the US tax laws is just that - a privilege. Legally, there is no "right" to be incorporated or to enjoy US tax benefits. It is not demanding too much to require that corporations expecting to avail themselves of these benefits remain US corporations. That means they are not just paper corporate citizens, but actual ones who employ US citizens, do business here and do not threaten to move elsewhere if they are legitimately held accountable for abuses of our laws. While this in no way is intended to deny corporations their right to expand their businesses overseas, their desire for expansion cannot be permitted to serve as a mask for displacement of American citizen workers at home. Where corporations do so, their corporate charters and tax treatment merits investigation and, where necessary, reassessment or penalties.

That is the general proposition, but there are more specific concerns. First, the lack of real teeth against corporate abuse of these two programs requires a remedy. Instead of violations being a complaint-driven process, an active enforcement team needs to be established to respond to, investigate, track and coordinate legitimate complaints of abuses. While the Bar can take the initiative in many of these cases by prosecuting them on a contingency basis, particularly where they involve, as many appear to, instances of age discrimination, that is not enough. I believe that abuses of these two programs need to be armed with at least the same armory of regulatory and prosecutorial weapons that sex and disability discrimination cases have at their disposal, including remedies for recovery of both attorneys fees and punitive damages by successful plaintiffs. As a former plaintiff's personal injury lawyer, I can tell you that no lawyer worth his or her salt would willingly turn down a case coming to him on the silver platter of a government-established violation. (Compare, the willingness of many large corporate law firms to handle so-called "pro-bono" work on behalf of convicted felons, defaulting tenants, petty criminals and others undeserving of free legal representation, while ignoring the legitimate needs of people like laid-off workers suffering the abuses of H1B and L1. Next time you look for a lawyer, ask what kind of pro-bono work he or she does on your dime or dollar - and make your choice of counsel accordingly.)

Second, establishing the "need" for importing H1B and L1 workers should not be the responsibility of the corporations who stand to - and have! - benefit from their self-established need, but of an impartial factfinder, whether governmentally or privately and independently based. As is it now, the fox is not just guarding the henhouse, but building it - and what shoddy construction it is! Checks must replace the cracks in the construction to ensure that where H1B and L1 workers are legitimately employed they are being paid what their applications said they'd be paid, with penalties to both the employer and employee for any variances found from the prevailing or agreed-upon wage, whichever is higher. Corporations seeking to employ these workers must be required to demonstrate their actual need for them under a higher standard of proof than the relatively lax, self-defined one now in effect. And the "walk-on-water" rule of Sec. 412 of ACWIA must be permanently plugged.

Third, to help those who have been displaced NOW, training and workforce reintegration programs must be adequately funded and operated. That does NOT mean dumbing down intelligent tech workers to assume less skilled or challenging jobs than those they performed so well for so long in so many cases. Nor does it mean using money originally targeted for training to go to facilitating imported workers' access to Green Cards, thereby mindlessly exacerbating this problem. It means real training and what I'd call "internal reintegration," i.e., establishing a system for displaced workers to regain their prior jobs once the need for their replacements, if ever even legitimately established, has ended.

Fourth, the serial amnesties granted to illegal immigrants, whether individually or en masse, must be stopped. Illegals do not arrive in this country with a clean start; their initial presence is a violation of law and a slap in the face of every legal immigrant who waited his or her turn to acquire the privilege of American citizenship. Illegal immigrants must be deported swiftly and justly, and where INS regulations need to be revised in this area I will work to revise them. Again, I reemphasize that I am NOT in favor of barring all immigration, only illegal immigration. There is a huge difference between the two and don't let anyone convince you otherwise, whether through legitimate logic or illegitimate appeals to emotions.

Finally, oversight over this problem must be maintained by providing for ongoing Congressional investigation, fact-finding and reporting on the impact and effects of these two programs. And those impacts are not just economic; they go directly to undermining the stable workforce and culture we have built up in this country. No discussion of or remedy for this issue can be complete without considering what we are sacrificing in terms of our long term national identity for short term corporate gain.

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