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Tuesday: Tears, Jeers, and Cheers
posted at 2007-06-12 23:02 | Last modified 2007-11-14 10:38
Tomorrow's likely to be a pretty quiet day on Jones St. Most of the Senate and a chunk of the House will catch 7:30am buses out to Wanchese for Sandy Basnight's memorial service.
It's a long trip, almost 4 hours each way. Most Senate committees and quite a few House panels have cancelled their meetings tomorrow. The Senate won't convene at all, while the House doesn't meet till 7:00pm.
How to not say "Latino"
At the very end of House J2 today, Onslow Republican George Cleveland's H598 got about 10 minutes of air time. As I explained last night, it's the measure that would require anyone wiring money to either prove legal residency in the US or pay a 5% tax on the transaction.
You knew this was going to be good, right? But maybe not this good.
Andy Ellen with the NC Retailers Association spoke against the bill, saying it "would turn retail clerks into immigration officials," and would slow down business at convenience stores, groceries, etc to a snail's pace.
Cleveland called that concern a "red herring." After all, he assured the committee, clerks wouldn't have to check *everyone's* immigration papers - just "the illegals."
After all, he says, retailers rely on visual confirmation of age for alcohol or tobacco sales. So clerks can decide for themselves whom to ask for papers--based, for example, on whether the customer speaks English. Here's the soundbite. (Cleveland assured me after the meeting that all naturalized citizens speak "very good English." That quote's here.)
Cleveland added that clerks could also use "other indicators" to decide who might be an illegal immigrant. To wit:
"Anyone working in a Western Union I would hope has enough common sense to be able to discern who they should question and who they shouldn't... If a fella comes in with a pair of shaggy boots on, and jeans and a t-shirt, and he's got a straw hat on? I mean, come on! Give me a break!"
When he was asked whether this would constitute racial profiling, he answered diffidently, "No...no...no."
Apparently, Rep. Cleveland doesn't see the potential for discrimination here (not to mention the potential avalanche of lawsuits hovering just over retailers' heads). But plenty of others did.
El Pueblo director Marisol Jimenez-McGee asked the committee who would pay to train all these clerks to verify the "virtual alphabet soup" of US work visas - there are dozens of them.
And J2 member Jim Harrell (D-Surry) openly questioned whether this would be constitutional. (I'm not a lawyer, but five gets you ten the answer's "no.")
Cleveland conceded to the committee that fake immigration papers are easy to get, and said clerks wouldn't be legally required to verify them, anyway. Besides, he added, "Anyone who wants an NC driver's license can get one, anyway."
So what's the point? You do the math.
You can hear the whole post-game Q&A with Cleveland for yourself.
Casey congrats
Big, BIG congratulations are in order tonight for three local journalists who've won one of the top awards a public interest journalist can win. The Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families announced its winners tonight for the 2007 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism.
For those who don't know about the Caseys, it's a terrifically competitive contest that pits your local folks against the big guns like the NY Times, Newsweek, Frontline, 60 Minutes, the whole shebang. It's a big deal to win one of these. And NC has two to celebrate tonight.
The gold medal in the Non-Daily category went to the Independent Weekly's Mosi Secret for his "Dream Deferred," Aug 2, 2006. It's a tough category, because it encompasses pretty much every non-glossy pub that isn't a daily paper.
Then again, it shouldn't come as a surprise to those who've been keeping up with Secret's consistently strong work since his arrival here from Houston a year and half ago. Rock on, Mosi!
Honorable Mention in Opinion went to the Greensboro News-Record's Lorraine Ahearn and Betsi Robinson for "Survivors' Prayer," Jan 8, 2006. That's another very tough category, because it doesn't differentiate on either circulation or frequency of publication. Everyone from the biggest to the tiniest gets lumped in together. Winning anything in that category is an enormous honor. Congratulations, Lorraine and Betsi!
Here's the full list of honorees.
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