GUI (Governing Under the Influence)

Most folks are familiar with the initials “DUI,” which stand for “Driving Under the Influence.”

Today, because of campaign contributions and incredible pressures brought to bear by special interest groups against individual candidates as well as their political parties, many politicians are forced to govern under the influence of the money and pressures that are applied to force these supposed representatives of their constituents to betray those who voted for them to satisfy those who wield the power.

One of those who wields a huge amount of power is the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue. On January 7, 2014, Donohue was interviewed on the Fox News program, Special Report, hosted by Bret Baier.

Towards the beginning of his interview, Donohue said:

There are 21 million people who are either out of work or working part time and want to work full time, or they’ve stopped looking.

Clearly, Donohue understands that there is a serious shortage of jobs. But, towards the end of the interview, Baier asks Donohue about immigration reform, and Donohue seemingly either forgets what he said minutes earlier or perhaps suffers from a lack of “mouth-to-ear coordination.”

He states that there is a need for more foreign workers for seasonal agricultural jobs and for workers at the “top end.” Presumably a reference to high-tech workers.

It is astonishing that on the one hand Donohue complains that there are not enough jobs and then, when addressing immigration, he suddenly does a 180 degree turn and claims that “demographics are destiny” and that there are not enough workers!

When Baier asks Donohue about candidates that the Chamber of Commerce would support in the upcoming elections and how immigration would figure into the equation, Donohue states that although the Chamber would support candidates that align with their positions on 70 percent of the issues, the Chamber of Commerce would make certain that none of their associates would attack any candidate irrespective of the positions they might take on other issues, provided that they supported Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

That statement almost sounded like Tony Soprano offering “protection.”

On March 26, 2013, CNBC posted an insightful report, the title of which paints a clear picture:

“Our Massively One-Sided Immigration Debate”

This news report was predicated on an extensive investigative report published a day earlier, on March 25, 2013, by the Sunlight Foundation.

Here is an important excerpt from the CNBC report:

As it turns out, while Americans remain divided on immigration, the lobbyists are not.

The Sunlight Foundation, a do-gooder government transparency and accountability outfit formed in 2006, on Monday released “Untangling the Webs of immigration Lobbying,” a report examining the organizations that have led the charge for changing the rules on immigration to the United States.

Sunlight dug through 8,000 lobbying reports filed since the last big push for immigration reform in 2007. Six-thousand seven-hundred and twelve of those involved immigration lobbying. More than $1.5 billion was spent on this immense lobbying push.

On January 2, 2014 the Global Post published a report written by Jake Tapper, CNN’s Chief Washington Correspondent and news anchor. He was previously employed as a journalist by ABC News. He reported that in 2011, astoundingly, approximately one in three high-tech jobs went to foreign workers in the United States. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for American high-tech workers was pegged at 14.7%.

The title and subtitle of his report summed up his findings succinctly:

The Indian tech worker H-1B visa scam

More than 1 in 3 U.S. tech jobs go to foreigners. Americans, and many foreigners, get cheated in the process. Obama and Zuckerberg want to let in more.

As Congress debates whether or not to extend unemployment benefits and talking heads on television news programs complain bitterly about Americans who are on disability, no one is willing to make the most obvious connection between increased levels of immigration and increasing problems Americans are having in finding jobs.

Not unlike impaired motorists, politicians determined to keep their jobs at any cost are driving this country off the cliff by promising amnesty for unknown millions of illegal aliens, incentivizing still more illegal immigration and working to enable even more authorized foreign workers to compete unfairly with American workers. These politicians, who have succumbed to the influence of the lobbyists with huge bankrolls – impairing their judgment – have placed America and Americans on the “Road to Ruin.”