As a result, savvy state politicians have hijacked the issue. Make no mistake about it; the fervor over restrictive immigration policy at the state level has nothing to do with addressing immigration, freeing up jobs for Americans or fighting crime. What it is, and has always been, is a method to ensure retention of their political power in the face of changing local demographics.

In prior eras, the citizenry often benefited from anti-immigration movements. Given today’s socioeconomic realities, the laws born of this movement have had the opposite effect. Take the case of Arizona for example. Their anti-immigration law was sold to the citizens of that state as merely a bill aimed at identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants. In reality, it was an attempt by state legislators to keep their seats in the State House by rolling back the Hispanic population they feared would elect fellow Hispanics to replace them.

Politically, passage of the law has been a great success as more than 400,000 Hispanic residents, a large number of them being legal residents or U.S. citizens, have reportedly abandoned the state. Economically, the law has been a nightmare. Enactment of the state’s anti-immigration bill sparked a successful wave of boycotts that have been documented as costing the hospitality industry alone over $150 million in cancelled convention and hotel reservations. The losses affecting retail, restaurants, tourism, real estate and the rest of Arizona’s economy are so bad the state Chamber of Commerce and several of the largest employers in the state publicly cried “uncle” by publishing a letter that declared:

“Last year, boycotts were called against our state’s business community, adversely impacting our already struggling economy and costing us jobs. Arizona-based businesses saw contracts cancelled or were turned away from bidding … Sales outside of the state declined… It is an undeniable fact that each of our companies and our employees were impacted by the boycotts and the coincident negative image.”

Despite Arizona’s folly with anti-immigration legislation, other state legislatures continue to pass laws targeting the Hispanic communities in their states. Georgia’s new law is the perfect case study to support employer claims that there are jobs Americans just won’t do. Employers have made this claim for years and have been vocally attacked by those who swore illegal aliens were taking jobs from Americans and if the illegals were forced out Americans would fall over themselves to fill those jobs.

Even before it went into effect, Georgia’s law was crippling the state’s agriculture and food service industries. Apparently, migrant workers have been avoiding Georgia and going to nearby states such as North Carolina and Florida where they will not have to suffer the indignities which Georgia holds for them.

It turns out the employers are right. Americans simply won’t take some jobs. All attempts to offset the loss of workers resulting from migrants avoiding their state have failed miserably. It was incorrectly assumed that the unemployed would jump at the chance to fill agricultural job openings. Yes, to be eligible to collect an unemployment check, a person needs to look for a job. They also need to accept work when it is offered to them. But the job needs to be “suitable.” Consequently, a laid off factory worker, schoolteacher, construction worker, etc., doesn’t have to accept a job picking crops.

Then someone had the great idea of getting convicts released on probation to do the work. That didn’t work either, as most of them who took picker jobs quit almost immediately. Turns out, in America, even convicts on probation are not required to accept jobs that necessitate backbreaking work for nine dollars an hour.

As a result of the new Georgia law, farmers are facing exactly the situation that Ronald Reagan said should not be allowed to happen — crops rotting in the field because there are no workers to pick them.

The agricultural labor shortage will assuredly drive up food costs, especially for peaches, onions and chicken, which Georgia had historically produced in abundance. There is also anecdotal evidence that states’ new immigration policies are forcing farmers to abandon labor-intensive crops such as blackberries for those that are mechanized like wheat and corn. Adding insult to injury, crops like lettuce and avocados will be increasingly sourced not from U.S. producers but from Mexico. The politically motivated labor shortage could result in as much as $9 billion in lost farm production annually— in addition to significantly higher prices for consumers, when they can find produce on the shelves.

In Alabama, there is already disillusionment among the citizenry over that state’s new anti-immigration law — to the point individuals are posting scathing comments about the new law on their personal Facebook pages!

The police are now required to demand proof of legal status from anyone who seems foreign. School administrators are required to ask children about their immigration status and that of their parents. People and businesses—including utilities companies—are encouraged not to enter into contracts with anyone who cannot prove their legal status.

Thanks to the politicians’ efforts to retain their power at all costs, Alabama’s anti-immigrant law will force already cash-strapped police, sheriff and other law enforcement agencies to cut services benefiting its citizens. The cost of training officers on the new law, detaining suspected illegals and legal fees from lawsuits associated with improper detention will certainly restrict law enforcement’s ability to protect and serve Alabama’s communities.

In just one jurisdiction, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office has already been forced to cut 20% of this year’s budget (roughly $3 million). Consequently, 145 deputy positions are being eliminated and safety services such as dispatching deputies to the site of vehicle wrecks and collisions are being scaled back.

According to the Pew Hispanic and Immigration Policy organizations, forcing illegals from Alabama will negatively impact the state’s budget. While illegals represent less than 3% of the state’s population, they paid well over $125 million in state and local taxes. Americans for Immigration Reform reports that Alabama could lose $2.6 billion in economic activity, $1.1 billion in gross state product, and approximately 17,819 jobs if all the illegals choose to leave the state.

Perhaps the most nefarious result of the country’s coordinated attack on the Hispanic community— sorry, immigration reform — is the intentional consequence that legal Hispanics will face. All the various state anti-immigration laws feature police ability to “investigate” and detain those who would appear not to belong in this country. They will ask the foreign-looking individual to produce documents that show it is okay for them to be in “our” country.

On the surface that may not sound like such a bad thing. Unfortunately, what non-Hispanics fail to consider is that citizens of this country are not required to carry identification of any kind, let alone documentation that proves you are a citizen and therefore allowed to be here. Consequently, a U.S. citizen of Hispanic decent, whether naturalized the day before and speaking with a heavy accent or born in this country and speaking perfect English, has the absolute right to be in public without any documentation whatsoever. However, to the law enforcement officer stopping them, they are just another Hispanic without documents and subject to detention…which is just a fancy political word for arrested.

Those U.S. citizens of Hispanic decent now find themselves unjustly sitting in a jail, denied a phone call since they are presumed illegal and not entitled to a call, and perhaps deported merely because the judicial system is too overloaded to check out their story and go by the house they bought and have lived in for the last 10 years and ask someone there to show them the detained person’s documents. Sound ridiculous? Well, it has already happened several times.

Like it or not, illegals contribute to the American economy and workforce in significant ways. Passing anti-immigration laws for the sake of a few politicians keeping their power for a few extra years, resulting in yet another loss of our collective right to privacy and further curtailment of individual freedoms in the post 9-11 U.S., does not seem like an equitable bargain for those of us not holding elective office.

It would also not appear to be a thoughtful economic plan for a country teetering on the verge of yet another recession to pass policies that will assuredly require tax hikes for those who are left behind to make up shortfalls in state and local budgets caused by the loss of Hispanic contributions.

The citizens of this country can no longer afford to allow the quest of a few state politicians seeking to hold on to their power to scapegoat the Hispanic community. They are not the reason we have more people living in poverty than ever before. They are not the reason state budgets are in the red. That is largely the fault of a dysfunctional Federal Government. If you want to solve your problems by throwing some out, leave the Hispanics alone and throw out a member of Congress.

Because the outcome signals hope for average Americans in a political world catering to the big business and the affluent, we wanted to share it with you. Hopefully, it will provide incentive for you to organize and fight for the issues important to you and your family’s well being.

As the owner of two family restaurants that cater to a daytime business clientele, I know a thing or two about serving up a good lunch. And, in the run-up to Wednesday’s Senate vote on the amendment to delay new rules limiting debit swipe fees, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that big banks were going to eat our lunch … again.

But, to my surprise and delight – and thanks in large part to small business owners from Maine to Iowa to Washington State who contacted their Senators and make their voices heard – Wall Street bankers didn’t win this time. They didn’t eat our lunch.

While 54 Senators voted for the bank-backed amendment, it needed 60 to pass, and we had a broad bi-partisan show of support on our side. But I’m sure this fight isn’t over, and that’s why it’s important to keep pointing out the facts of swipe fees and why small businesses need these new rules to take effect on schedule in July.

As a small business owner, there are certain costs of doing business that are beyond my control. The cost of accepting plastic as a form of payment is one of them. And that cost has been going up and up.
Most people probably don’t realize that debit cards cost small businesses significantly more than checks, even though a debit transaction is basically an electronic check. But for each debit card transaction, multiple “middle men” each get a cut: the business owner’s bank, the interchange network (usually Visa or MasterCard), and the customer’s bank.

By the time the merchant is paid for his or her service or merchandise, the amount we end up with can be reduced by several percent. Often, it feels like we’re making more money for big banks than we are for ourselves.

Swipe fees serve two major purposes: to cover the cost of doing business, and as a sort of insurance policy against the risk assumed in processing debit transactions.

As a business owner, I understand paying for services. However, these fees, controlled by huge banks and the Visa-MasterCard duopoly, have become exorbitant over the past few years. Visa-MasterCard (which control a combined 86 percent of interchange transactions) and banks charge and average fee of 44 cents per transaction – even though the cost to them is about four cents.

Small businesses have had no leverage to negotiate on these fees. And, as Americans increasingly use debit cards rather than cash, most businesses have no choice but to accept them or go out of business. As a result, the biggest Wall Street banks have continued to amass astronomical wealth on the backs of Main Street businesses.

The Durbin amendment in last year’s financial overhaul limited debit transaction fees to a “reasonable and proportional” standard for big banks (about 12 cents per transaction, or 300 percent of the actual cost of the transaction), while exempting small banks with less than $10 billion in assets.

The amendment voted on in the Senate Wednesday would have delayed the new rules for at least a year, and possibly spelled their demise altogether. It would have put small businesses like mine on hold, letting the big banks and card networks walk away with another $1.3 billion in debit fees for every month of delay.

Thankfully, enough Senators recognized that blocking the new rules would be a big mistake. Capping big banks’ swipe fees is a win-win for small businesses, who will pay dramatically less in fees, and small banks, who will be able to continue charging their current fees and have a leg up on the big guys.

Swipe fees have received eight congressional hearings and have been studied by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office three times. Each study concluded the same thing: the swipe fee system is broken and it needs reform.

Congress finally passed swipe fee reform last year. It needs to let its own work take effect, putting those billions of dollars back in the hands of small businesses and our customers to boost our local economies and create jobs. And thanks to the Senate’s vote Wednesday, it will.

Mike Craighill and his wife Antonia own the Soup and Such restaurants in Billings, Montana. They are members of the Montana Small Business Alliance.

America is being transformed. Americans know something is very wrong and are desperately digging for answers. Spending is out of control. Rules and regulations are enforced over every aspect of our lives. Not only can we not build on our private property, but our rivers and streams are becoming off limits; energy prices are skyrocketing as our government refuses to even consider using American energy reserves that are locked away, apparently forever. American jobs are disappearing oversees. Our money is growing more worthless every day and taxes are going up on everything we buy, eat, drive, or wear. Schools don’t teach. Healthcare isn’t about health. Investments translate to bankruptcy. And Social Security isn’t secure.

We just held an election demanding that the run-away federal budget and government intrusion be reigned in. But after a lot of fast maneuvering, hot rhetoric and back slapping, basically nothing was cut. How can all of this happen before our very eyes, in broad daylight, against our will? Bottom line – politicians at all levels have found a way to ignore the American people while accomplishing the greatest transformation in American history.

How indeed? Alert political activists may have noticed a major change in the way government and public policy has been run for the past couple of decades. That change is the key to how we are being outmaneuvered – right before our eyes. There are many names for the tactic: Group Manipulation; Consensus; Facilitation; Psychologically- Controlled Environments; Scientific Coercion. It all means the same thing — professional manipulators are being employed to control pubic meetings through a predetermined outcome, and they are trained to lead you straight to that result and even make you think it was your idea.

If you’ve been to a public meeting lately, you will see the meeting is run by a man or woman who is not really part of the group in an “official” capacity. They are called “facilitator.” His/her job is to bring the group to “consensus,” which means there is not to be debate or disagreement. The policy or project or program on the table is not discussed in detail so that the group can judge the item on its merits and vote on it. In fact, if you begin to question the policy or ask who the facilitator represents, or in general show signs of disagreement, the facilitator quickly loses his/her charm and begins to describe you to the group as “uncooperative” or a troublemaker who is wasting the group’s time. There is never a vote on the issue. Instead, the group somehow reaches “consensus.”

The average activist or concerned citizen doesn’t have a chance to debate merits of the program. A property owner is viewed as selfish and unenlightened to bring up how a policy might affect his/her property. And if the facilitator is good at his job, and they usually are highly paid to be good, then it won’t matter how many protesters manage to turn out. It doesn’t matter how much pressure has been brought to bear in letters to the editor. The facilitator brings his group home to the predetermined outcome, the policy becomes law. Government grows, freedoms are lost. …Until now — that is.

Best-selling author Beverly Eakman has been conducting one-day seminars for years to teach the good guys how to bust up these facilitator-controlled public policy meetings. Those attending her events have also been provided a copy of a manual detailing how to organize and fight back. The problem was, Beverly could only conduct so many seminars and that made for a small distribution of the manual. Now that has changed.

Beverly has updated the manual to stand on its own, without the necessary seminar, and she has released it as a stand-alone book. That means activists across the nation can now learn how to take back control of their government just by reading and following the advice in “How To Counter Group Manipulation Tactics, 2011 Edition.” The book is published and available from Midnight Whistler Publishers, www.midnightwhistler.com

She details how “Provocateurs,” “Agitators,” and “Change Agents” are able to force through their agendas right under your nose. She teaches you their lingo and how they use it to divide you from the group and marginalize your honest questions and objections. Beverly goes into great detail, giving you specific dialogue and words that would be used against you. She shows how, once you have revealed your opposition, the facilitator will focus on you, using lines like, ‘even a child would understand…” or “everyone on the committee understands…” indicating only you are out of step.

It’s psychological warfare and Beverly Eakman’s book gives you everything you need to know to take control of the battlefield. She teaches you how to recognize that the process is in use; she shows you how to remain calm and under the radar until you are ready to launch an effective counter attack – and she shows you how to turn the tables on the facilitator.

“How To Counter Group Manipulation Tactics” gives you the five basic steps to indoctrination and how to counter them. Get a copy and start taking back control of your government.

Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence.

Late last year President Obama and Congress conducted a very public debate over federal income tax rates. Both Democrats and Republicans argued that marginal tax rates should not be raised during this time of economic malaise. They insisted that to allow the tax rates to rise would further exacerbate financial difficulties facing Americans leading to more bankruptcies, foreclosures and job losses.

Democrats, who said they wanted to allow the tax rates of “millionaires” to go up so they could “pay their fair share,” insisted they were looking out for the working class. They used the term “millionaire” despite the fact that their proposal actually raised the tax rates of those making well below $1,000,000. In fact, they would have effectively raised the tax rates of those making $250,000 or more.

Republicans, who said they wanted to protect small businesses from increased taxation that would obstruct their ability to hire new workers, declared they were looking out for everyone, regardless of their level of income. They cited small businesses because many small business owners, whether incorporated or operating as sole proprietors, file their business’ profit or losses as part of their personal tax returns.

Whether you support the Democratic or Republican viewpoint is somewhat irrelevant. What is significant is that the public debate was, once again, not an honest one.

Democrats employed the word “millionaire” because they were looking to create a socio-economic conflict. They wanted all those whose saw themselves as the average, hard-working, never-caught-a-break but most importantly not rich voter to think the Democratic party was finally going to fight for them and stick it to those rich Wall Street, banker types. The fact that they fully intended to raise the tax rates for folks making well under a million dollars a year was, apparently, a technicality they thought was not worth sharing with the American people.

Republicans employed the term small businesses because they were looking to create a commonality between the (perceived) party of big business and the rich with everyday citizens. Despite deep pockets and significant influence over the legislative process in Washington, big business cannot cast a single vote for anyone. Despite the fact they can have their way in almost any situation in everyday life, the rich are limited to just one vote per person. Since the majority of jobs in this country are provided by small businesses, they believed by claiming to defend small businesses folks would think they were fighting to save jobs.

The great tax debate of 2010 also included a discussion of payroll taxes. A far more subtle conversation that was almost ignored by the media, the issue of payroll taxes was arguably the one that should have garnered the majority of media attention. Republicans proposed to cut the Social Security withholding tax. GOP spin doctors argued that reducing the portion of the tax paid by workers would “put more money in the pockets of hard working Americans” and create jobs.

The Democratic position was never expressed, at least not publicly.  The lack of Democratic resistance was the likely cause for such scarce media coverage of the payroll tax issue. However, the seriousness of its consequences should have sent the press scrambling to the halls of Congress demanding to know how an attack on Social Security was a good thing for the country, especially in this time of great austerity.

In the end, the President and congressional Democrats gave in and enacted the Republican position, keeping all federal marginal income tax rates at the current level and reducing the Social Security withholding tax paid by workers by two percent (2%). However, the story does not end there, which is why it does not matter which side of the debate you supported.

In terms of a worker’s take-home pay, the entire congressional debate over marginal tax rates was nothing but proverbial smoke and mirrors. While our attention was focused on tax rates, the government that claimed it was fighting for us so that we would have a little more in our paychecks from week to week was actually recalculating the tax tables that determine just how much is actually withheld from our checks regardless of which rate you are taxed.

Here is exactly how they helped the average working- and middle-class family— if you were married and your taxable income was $24,500 last year, the federal government took $89.60 a month. Given the same scenario, your taxable income this year will be $24,900 and Washington will be taking $141.70 every single month. That is why the Social Security withholding tax reduction was so important. By reducing that to compensate for the bait and switch Washington pulled with regard to income taxes, all but the most frugal penny-pinchers would not notice the slight change in take home pay.

However, what politicians and bureaucrats sacrificed to keep the masses preoccupied with irrelevant debate conducted on the House and Senate floors and played out in our national media was, as usual, our future and the future of our grandchildren—this time in the form of Social Security solvency.  Make no mistake about it, the future of this country’s Social Security program is now officially under attack.

The payroll tax reduction, contrary to politician and media claims, will do absolutely nothing to create jobs. It was never intended to create jobs. Any discussion of job creation was totally dishonest. There has never been, nor will there be, an employer who will create a new job because a worker pays less in taxes. While the net effect to Social Security would be the same, if the payroll tax reduction had gone to the employer, then perhaps you have a legitimate argument for job creation. However that was never a consideration. So much for honest debate.

A lot has been discussed in the media and around workplace water coolers on the just what role the tenor of partisan debate in Congress played in the recent shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and those present at her Tucson event exercising their civic freedom.  While there is no hard evidence connecting political discourse and the horrific act perpetrated on Ms. Giffords and her constituents, what is evident is that it is time for Congress to stop misleading the American people and start engaging in honest discourse.

There are many issues that could be called upon to illustrate congressional malfeasance but health care, earmarks, and immigration will do nicely.  The debate over health care is arguably the most dishonest political debate in our history.  First and foremost, it was never about health care but rather health insurance.

Reforming health care would ensure a heart attack victim would not be placed on a stretcher in the corner of an emergency room for days until they die.  Reforming health care would ensure if you and your doctor decide that given your family history you should have a colonoscopy at age 45, you would have one.   Reforming health care would ensure the availability of prenatal care to women of every socio and economic class, resulting in lower infant mortality, healthier babies and future healthier adults.  Reforming health care would mean a child with diabetes would continue to have their diabetes treated when they became an adult.

The debate we had in America last year was not about the health care you and I receive but rather who would be eligible to get health care (insured) and who would pay for it.    The debate was never about you and me but rather government and big business— single payer versus the status quo.  Death panels, government takeover of health care and now, the repeal of so-called “job killing” Obamacare are all disingenuous political catch phrases designed to distract and redirect our collective attention from what is really going on— having won the government versus big business battle of last year, big business is attempting to roll back what meager assurances you and I gained from the political negotiation that went on during last year’s debate.

Calling for an end to congressionally directed spending, or earmarks, is definitely the biggest misinformation campaign conducted by political leaders in modern history.  Even if Congress ends the practice, it will not save $1— not one dollar —from the federal budget.  Every earmark dollar is taken from the already approved budgets of the various federal agencies.  Eliminating the earmark does not mean the agency will receive less money, it just means they will have more to money to spend on things the agency decides to spend money on.

True earmark reform would occur when agencies are consulted and projects that advance an agency’s mission in a way that facilitates their directive in a meaningful way are authorized and appropriated by Congress.  This would not only get funds back to a Congressman’s or Senator’s jurisdiction but also provide agencies with a viable networking of local resources that advance their missions and provide benefit to the entire country.  The current debate over earmarks is not about reigning in spending so our grandchildren won’t be paying our debt in the future.  Politicians primarily care about their political power today and the earmark debate is the single best example of just how deceptive they can be in an effort to increase that power.

As disturbing as the health care and earmark debates are, the most dishonest debate of the day is that over immigration.  Whether we want to admit it or not, this is the new Civil Rights front.  Much like Blacks during the Jim Crow era, Hispanics now live in fear in America.  All Blacks were tainted with the history of slavery; all Hispanics are now tainted with the label “illegal alien.”

National security, sovereignty, and jobs have all been used to vilify a race of people who seek to toil in areas most of us turned our backs on generations ago.  Immigrants seek to educate their children so they may live a more comfortable life than their parents did; they seek to live peacefully and with pride of their heritage.  Sound familiar?

Congress has declared our borders are too porous but that wasn’t a problem when our collective attention on the southern border revolved around the so-called War on Drugs during which the price of drugs actually fell because so many drug shipments were able to penetrate our southern border.  Now the rallying cry is terrorism but the overwhelming majority of all verified terrorist entry into the U.S. comes across our northern border with Canada.  Why isn’t Congress demanding a fence to the North?  Because they are not Hispanic, plain and simple.

“They are taking jobs away from Americans,” is another favorite rant of those opposed to immigration in Congress.  However, it isn’t the high tech, nursing, manufacturing, or other well-paying jobs we Americans seek that these nefarious border-crossers are taking.  Any number of independent studies indicate that the only jobs that undocumented workers fill are low, non-skilled manual labor opportunities paying minimum wage or slightly higher.

What flies in the face of political reality is that legal foreign workers, whether immigrant or non-immigrant, in many cases actually raise the wages and working conditions of American workers but you will never hear that articulated by Congress.  Nor will you hear them admit that it is our fellow Americans who are hiring them because THEY don’t want to hire American workers.  Hispanics are not to blame in this situation, it is Americans who are giving “our” jobs away to so-called illegal aliens.  Just as we did as the era of Jim Crow came to an end, we Americans need to look inside to ourselves and stop pointing the finger of blame at an entire race of people who hold no responsibility for what we accuse them of.

Whether it is health care, earmarks, immigration or another issue, the American people need to demand that those we send to Congress to represent us actually tell us the truth.   Without knowing the truth, our freedom and God-given rights are always in jeopardy.