I have no sympathy for Linda Chavez.
For those of you who would rather watch paint dry then follow politics (and believe me, I do sympathize with you), let me elucidate.
Linda Chavez was Bush's nominee for Secretary of Labor. It occurred to me today, while I saw Ms. Chavez begging for sympathy at a press conference, that I didn't know what in Buddha's name the Secretary of Labor actually does.
So, for the good of America's workforce (and the rest of the world's, since everyone knows which country is in charge on this planet), here is the official mission statement from the Department of Labor website:
"The U.S. Department of Labor is charged with preparing the American workforce for new and better jobs, and ensuring the adequacy of America's workplaces. It is responsible for the administration and enforcement of over 180 federal statutes. These legislative mandates and the regulations produced to implement them cover a wide variety of workplace activities for nearly 10 million employers and well over 100 million workers, including protecting workers' wages, health and safety, employment and pension rights; promoting equal employment opportunity; administering job training, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation programs; strengthening free collective bargaining and collecting, analyzing and publishing labor and economic statistics."
Just as I had thought, the Department of Labor should quickly go the way of the mammoth. (Although to be fair, from what I know about the mammoth, it was a much more majestic creature.)
Let's think about this. The DOL is "charged with preparing the American workforce for new and better jobs". If I'm not mistaken, wasn't that the job of our fucking parents?
I'll cut to the chase. By what means can the DOL possibly "prepare" the workforce? Well, by the means provided by the workforce that has too much ability and pride to go crying to the DOL for help "preparing" to live their goddamn lives.
Can anyone answer me this one question? When are people going to get it through their skulls that they have to exert some kind of freaking effort to live life? Oh, and this too: that you're a dependent, leeching second-hander if you dare make the claim that someone else ought to support - not just his or her own life - but yours, too.
The whole purpose of the Department of Labor is pure Marxism. An agency in charge of "protecting workers' wages" is straight out of Animal Farm. Didn't Marx write that? Or am I thinking of A Night at the Opera?
Fuck. I should be shot. How can I confuse a compelling, exciting, beautiful thing like an animal farm with something as maddeningly dull as an opera?
But back to the point.
Hey, DOL: We don't need no stinking wage protection. Protection from whom? Ah yes, those evil employers. If anything, employers should get an agency to protect them. Employers aren't the ones walking into the post office or the Internet company and shooting up people.
Only the dishonest think "wage protection" is a value. An honest person wants to think for themselves. An honest person wants to understand what kind of job he or she is getting into, and to make the decision for him or herself whether to take the job.
And yes, if you're so desperate for cash that you need to shovel cow manure 14 hours a day, I only have one response. Tough shit. You should be thanking your employer for having shit to shovel, not demanding "protection" against him.
And what do we mean by "wage protection" exactly? Do we mean "making sure the worker gets the wage he is promised"? Of course not. We already have a system to deal with that. It's called the courts. "Wage protection" in the DOL sense means "to use the threat of fines and/or jail time against employers to get undeserved rewards for the employee". After all, if the employee wasn't getting deserved rewards, he could find a hundred lawyers in the phone book that would help him get it.
We have President William Howard Taft to thank for this bullshit. He signed the creation of the Department of Labor into law. Thanks a lot, you fat bastard.
Now back to Linda Chavez.
Here's why I have no sympathy for her. At the press conference Tuesday, this woman tried to defend her employment of some illegal alien. But unless Chavez's reason for taking the job as Secretary of Labor is actually to eliminate the position, she should have to obey U.S. labor laws to the letter.
According to the Associated Press, Chavez said, "I think I always knew that she was here illegally. I don't check green cards when I see a woman who is battered and who has no place to live and nothing to eat and no way to get on her feet."
Don't give us that sob story, Chavez. Firstly, your position doesn't allow that kind of compassion. Here's what Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman had to say about it:
"The Department's primary role [in stemming the flow of illegal aliens into the United States] is to reduce the economic incentive to hire illegal workers through targeted enforcement of existing labor standards in the workplace."
(Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education Committee on Appropriations, United States House of Representatives, May 14, 1997)
Secondly, Chavez, your comment that you're a victim of "search-and-destroy" politics is equally lame. If you, and more importantly, Bush's advisors, really thought you weren't a hypocritical bitch, then all of you wouldn't have caved in so easily.
Then again, not caving in implies having some kind of moral fortitude. Whether the Bush team has that remains to be seen. Let's hope so.
Signing off,
JR
