News Roundup (5/1/06)

Recommend...del.icio.us Digg it Furl Netvouz Netscape Newsvine reddit Yahoo MyWeb May 1st, 2006 at 03:57pm Eric

Today marked the National Day Without Immigrants, the effects of which have been felt all throughout Iowa and the rest of the country. The Register has a few articles detailing the impact of today’s boycott, highlights including some anger over lost wages in Storm Lake, some construction delays, a few protests across the state (including Iowa City), and various other reactions from around the state. I recognize that in a state such as Iowa, where we are having trouble stemming the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs, where the agricultural economy has seen better days, and where unemployment is a problem that some still face, immigration can be a particularly thorny issue. However, the immigrants who are coming to Iowa are exactly the type of productive citizens that the state claims to need so badly. These are people who work hard, who raise their children here, who pay taxes (regardless of citizenship, the sales tax is always paid), and who only seek the opportunity to share in and improve the quality of this country. My family came to this country generations ago via immigration, and the idea that we as Americans, or we as Iowans, would deny others the right to the same opportunities our families had when they came to the country is outrageous to me. The sooner Iowa recognizes that immigrants are a boon to our culture, our economy, and our state, the better.

In other news, Chet Culver has articulated the details of his plan to create more affordability among higher education. However, when I heard Culver speak, he seemed to gear his plan more towards offering more AP classes in high school than in restructuring and improving the economics of college. Yes, being able to knock a year off your B.A. or B.S. in high school would be a financial windfall, but an AP class is, in my opinion, a poor substitute for both the knowledge and life experience gained at college. And, yet again, another political candidate outlines a plan for spending without saying where that money is going to come from.

Finally, if anyone missed it, Stephen Colbert absolutely took Bush to task at the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner. He did not reserve his vitriol for Bush alone though, as the press itself took a beating, as well as McCain and Scalia among others. Here’s a Washington Post summary of the sketch and how it went over.

Related Posts

• No related posts

Entry Filed under: Miscellaneous

Related Searches: country generations, national day without immigrants, financial windfall, chet culver, productive citizens