PrintMay 9, 2010
Boycott the boycotters
Surprise, surprise. Obama's leftist shock troops have drawn their line in the sand regarding Arizona's ramped up focus on stemming the tide of illegal immigrants:
Civil rights and labor groups on Thursday urged Americans not to travel to Arizona, as they launched a national boycott in response to the state's divisive new anti-illegal immigration law.
The boycott was called by the National Council of La Raza, the largest US-based Hispanic civil rights group, ...(in association with) the largest US civil rights group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, (which) said the law "tramples on the civil rights of Hispanic persons and... cannot be enforced without resorting to racial and ethnic profiling."La Raza and the NAACP were predictably joined by the enforcement arm of the Obama administration, otherwise known as SEIU, Andy Stern's militant government union.
"By issuing an extensive boycott of meetings and conventions in Arizona, we are sending a clear message that working families want serious solutions to our immigration problems--not frivolous policies that undermine public safety, waste millions of taxpayer funds, and imperil our most basic civil rights," said SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina in a statement released this morning.Of course those "working families, Mr. Medina speaks for are the families who belong to government unions, the only sector of the struggling U.S. economy that continues to grow and achieve wage and benefit increases. Their protected status is a direct result of the union's enormous financial contributions to Democrat politicians in general and Barack Obama in particular.
The union fat cat families are being joined by the fattest of union felines, the professional players unions from major league sports. Ill-informed millionaires from major league baseball have now joined with tattooed millionaire pro basketball players and liberal urban municipal governments from Boston to San Francisco to urge a boycott of brave Arizona. In fact many in the reactionary liberal community are now pressuring baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to move the All-Star game scheduled this summer from Phoenix to punish the state for its heightened focus on enforcing immigration law.
While the liberal enforcers hope to sway Arizonans from protecting their communities, they fail to realize that Arizona is already suffering an unintentional boycott due to the lawlessness on her southern border. Its not hard to see that Phoenix and Tuscon and Flagstaff are unsafe destinations to visit so long as narco-terrorists and other criminally inclined illegal immigrants have free rein in their cities. Phoenix in particular would like to shake its dangerous image:
Phoenix, Arizona has become the kidnapping capital of America, with more incidents than any other city in the world outside of Mexico City and over 370 cases last year alone.Unless Arizona stems the crime wave accompanying its massive influx of illegal immigrants, it stands no chance of resuming the booming tourism formerly drawn to its sun-drenched environs.
Perhaps the tea party movement can help provide a bit of push-back to the strident propagandists on the left calling for a boycott of Arizona. Boycotting isn't necessarily a one-way street. One could call for a boycott of the NBA after their pitiful "Los Suns" uniform pander to the amnesty crowd, but that would be redundant. The abysmal product the NBA puts on the floor is doing a fine job of curtailing attendance all by itself:
[T]he Detroit Pistons...net average gate receipts are down a staggering 42.8 percent year-over-year, according to the figures reported by teams to the league office...The other teams suffering the most at the gate are the Sacramento Kings (average gate receipts down 36.2 percent), Minnesota Timberwolves (down 24.4 percent), Phoenix Suns (down 23.8 percent), Los Angeles Clippers (down 23.3 percent), Milwaukee Bucks (down 23.2 percent), and Golden State Warriors (down 22.3 percent).Major League Baseball, while hardly considered "the national pastime" as it was in more halcyon days, presents a more palatable product than the NBA. But then, the only enterprise putting out a less desirable product than the NBA is the Democrat party. While Commissioner Selig ponders whether to cave in to the nonsense proposed by his players union by taking the All Star game away from Phoenix, perhaps he should consider what a boycott of Major League Baseball would look like if the Tea Party decides to stand up for beleaguered Arizona. The noisy provocations of La Raza, the NAACP, SEIU, and the professional sports unions in fact comprise a tiny minority of Americans. Their volume has simply been amplified by the perennially complicit, liberal media. The American Tea Party movement and its sympathizers represent a significant majority of Americans. They have already promised to boycott the Democrat party come November. The mass retirements of incumbent Democrat congressmen suggests that they are getting the message. If the amnesty crowd wants to start playing the boycott card, let's join in and see how things work out.
Ralph Alter blogs at Right on Target www.rightot.blogspot.com
