100,000 Illegal Immigrants in this State and Yet I Can Pay No One $2 an Hour to Put Up With My Grouchy Ass

I have some questions.  For starters, doesn’t it seem like, if you call your blog Tennessee Conservative Watch, that you are watching conservatives?  If I had a blog called B.’s Boob Watch wouldn’t you expect to find boobs being watched, not a blog of things watched by my boobs?

Maybe I’m just overly picky.

Secondly, saying that “We estimate that the annual fiscal burden on the state’s taxpayers is about $285 million” is effective.  $285 million dollars seems like a heavy annual burden.  “That equates to a cost per native-born headed household of more than $122”?  Not nearly as effective.  More than $122 a year per household?  I’m sorry.  Yes, it’s an amount of money.  But reading that literally caused me to laugh out loud.

Oh no!  Not $122 a year!

And where is this vast, massive $122 per native born household per year going?

$23 million goes to health care.  That means the roughly 2,336,000 native born headed households are paying $10 a year to provide healthcare for illegal immigrants.  Ten whole dollars!   I bet we have that in change in our couch.

Okay, what about law enforcement?

The uncompensated cost of incarcerating deportable illegal aliens in Tennessee state and local prisons amounts to about $5.7 million a year.

Um, I’m supposed to be outraged at $2.45 a year?  Yes, so far illegal immigrants are costing my household $12.45 a year to make sure that they have healthcare and go to jail.

So, I’m still not feeling how this is an undue burden on the taxpayers of Tennessee.  After all, since we don’t have an income tax and everyone who shops here pays sales tax, that $2.45 per native born household is less than that in actuality.

But, you ask, what about the education costs?

Based on an estimate of the 100,000 illegal immigrants in Tennessee in 2007 and estimated per pupil costs of $7,850 per year for public K-12 schooling, Tennesseeans spend nearly $228 million annually on education for the children of illegal immigrants. An additional more than $27 million is being spent annually on programs for limited English students who likely are children of illegal aliens.

And, this, my friends, is why it’s so important to keep an eye on the conservative rhetoric when it comes to illegal immigration.  You see how quickly the rhetoric shifts from being about illegal immigrants to being about U.S. citizens?  And then watch how it slides from U.S. citizens who definitely are the children of illegal immigrants to U.S. citizens who are “likely” the children of illegal immigrants.

I’m tired, so I want to, for the moment, overlook the intellectual dishonesty necessary to come up with the $228 million number (does it assume that there are an equal number of male and female illegal immigrants in Tennessee?  How long does it assume those immigrants stay here?  How are they identifying which children are the children of illegal immigrants?  Etc.).  But I do want to talk about the two-pronged bullshit of this approach.

One prong is the idea that conservatives promote of the importance of individuality and of each person being judged as an individual and on his own merit, and yet, when it comes to this topic, some of them are more than happy to hold the U.S. citizen children of illegal immigrants responsible for the actions of their parents and to suggest punishing those citizens for their parents’ activities.  Well, which is it?  Is each person only responsible for himself or do we talk about the cost of educating U.S. citizens as a part of the cost of illegal immigration?  Or are we just supposed to ignore that inconsistency?

Second prong is how willing conservatives are to wrap themselves in the flag and to pretend as if they are the super patriots while at the same time being willing to promote this notion that there are certain U.S. citizens who aren’t real citizens and who are willing to promote the unconstitutional idea that being born here isn’t really enough to qualify you for citizenship.

Citizens have a right to a publicly funded education.  Period.  Denying them or working to deny them an education, calling the education of these citizens problematic because of the status of these citizens’ parents, is just about as fundamentally un-American as anything I can think of, with the exception of calling citizens’ education problematic because they are “likely” the children of any despised group.

We are still better than this.  And we can recognize this nonsense for the bigotry it is and stand against it.

Citizens have a right to an education and other benefits of citizenship, regardless of who their parents are or what their parents have done.

I Have Watched Too Much TV

—Drake & Josh is the sweetest show about young gay love.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that they are supposed to be brothers.

–I have just been falling asleep at random times, so I am unclear about whether the folks on the History Channel actually discovered Bigfoot.  Even Newscoma could not tell me and she’s a Bigfoot fanatic.

–I did watch a number of tornados get chased.  Poor Discovery Channel.  Try as they might “We must get this data or we won’t get funding next year” is just not that compelling a storyline.

–Is there anyone cuter than Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs?

–That Splash of Color dude will use any excuse to take his shirt off.

–Here’s what I especially don’t like about Kimora.  First, she doesn’t appear to actually do anything on her TV show except for kind of “be her brand.” But second, it pisses me off that she doesn’t actually seem to be having a better time.  I mean, here she is, doing nothing but running around being Kimora, that’s all she has to do in life, and she doesn’t seem very happy about it.

Is this Ironic?

The recalcitrant brother has jury duty starting tomorrow.

It’s Just a Neck Wound

It occured to me that I haven’t shown y’all a picture of my neck wound because I’m feeling strangely self-conscious about it.  The wound itself is pretty okay looking, I guess.  It’s pretty bruised, but I don’t even have any stitches and it is right where he said he’d put it, in that wrinkle.  But, and I don’t know how clear it is in this picture, I have a huge bulbous lump under it and it kind of grosses me out.

But it’s just a body.

And the way it looks are a story about who I am.  And so, here it is, the thing written on me most recently.

What We Need is a Round Table

It’s not been all misery and constant bitching. I got out of the house yesterday for lunch to head over to the informal liberal bloggers get-together. It ended up being me, Mack, SouthernBeale, Newscoma, SquirrelQueen, Chris Wage, and Lesley and a shit-ton of UK fans who were cornholing in the parking lot.

It was good.  I found it very energizing, but all of the conversations going on were so interesting that I kept getting distracted.

So, I know we covered this at lunch, but I was clearly not taking notes.  If you had to recommend a handful of national liberal blogs a person should be reading, what would they be?  And state-wide?

I am a Terrible Incapacitated Person

I’m bored.  I’m pissed off.  I just hacked up blood, which would have been gross on its own, but even grosser that it ended up on the bathroom wall.  I’m terrible company and yet I’m furious that, yet again, there’s no one here.  It’s not that I need need anyone to be here, but you know, when you splatter blood on the bathroom wall, it’s nicer if the conversation goes

Me: Oh god.

Anyone but me: What?

Me: I just hocked a huge wad of blood on the bathroom wall.  Is that normal?

Anyone but me: I don’t think so.  Do you feel bad otherwise?

Me: No, I feel pretty good.

Anyone but me: Okay, well then, let’s keep an eye on it and, if it happens again, let’s call the doctor.

Me: Okay, thanks.  That makes me feel less freaked out.

I’m tired and I’m tired of being tired.  I’m bored and lonely but I’m in no condition to have guests.

I should just have it out with the Butcher, because I’m pissed that the second my parents left he ditched me to go hang out with his friends.  I have seen him a grand total of maybe thirty minutes in the past three days.

And yet, what kind of mean-ass person am I for wanting company for my misery?  I mean, this sucks for me.  Why would I want someone who felt fine to just sit around and keep an eye on me when it means four days of shitty television and me being a big baby?

So, what can you do?  If you’re me, inflict it on the internet instead, I guess.