Mucho Fraud

      Arizona has been put in its place again.
      The word out of Washington was clear today: "Arizona may not require documentary proof of citizrenship for people seeking to vote in federal nelections, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday."
       The reactionary right-wing government of Arizona, backed by its reactionary right-wing constituency, had sought to require voters -- those already qualified and registered -- to  produce something more, some form of   documented evidence that they were U.S. citizens
      This presumably would have meant such things as drivers licenses and passports, things that  Arizona"s favorite class of voters routinely possess, but thousands of other Arizonans may not -- notably the elderly, young,  minorities, and most especially the many, many of a latino heritage which predates everything in white America. Yes,  even John Birch, Dwight David Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover.
      This case was the third in recent years in which  Arizona has tried to do something so politically significant, and the court once more said, no, never mind,  it's taken care of by federal law.
      . The state  always pretends it''s trying to prevent "fraud." And that's always a political lie. There's no real voter fraud. IThe state is simply trying to keep as many Democratic-leaning people as possible from going to the polls on election day to exercise their constitutional right to vote.
      And Arizona ought to be ashamed of itself.
       
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TWISTER Would you expect the good folks of Moore, Oklahoma to be saying, "No thanks, we don't want and couldn't accept federal money to help us recover from the recent tornado, That would be socialism -- or worse. We'll just take care of it ourselves, the good ol' American way." Well of course that isn't really the American way at all. When neighbors need that much help, whether they're next door or far away, we like to think we're part of a humane society that provides it, one way or another. It isn't socialism. Or welfare. It's about as close to the divine as government gets.

SWEAT

      Americans were shocked by the terrible toll  -- the death of upwards of 400 men, women and children -- in the recent collapse of an eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh.
      U,S, and European clothiers were quick to deny or minimize any specific involvement,  though the western world is in fact a prime market for the goods of such foreign sweatshops.
       The Bangladeshi workers trapped and crushed when the concrete building pancaked were being paid at the rate of $38 a month. That's why Bangladesh could become the world' second biggest source of cheap clothes, after only China.
       U,S. garment manufacturers can't come close to competing with the Asian payrolls, of course, but they try for cheap..
       California, I learned this week, is the nation's largest garment center -- $30 billion a year, with some 6,000 sewing shops employing 140,000  I also learned to my surprise that the powerful old labor movement of the industry, the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, which fought sweatshops, is mostly history.
       Garment work is nonunion work these days, Sweatshops..
        In 2000 a survey found that only one in three shops in the Los Angeles area was in compliance with minimum wage and overtime laws. Contract prices were set so low that many contractors could not afford to pay minimum wage.  Many workers, typically from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, China and Vietnam, did not speak English and had little or no job protection.
       .It's nothing we can be proud of..  .
       

SWEAT