The Quiet Conservative July 17, 2010
Examining the Conventional Wisdom- A Timely Example
The last column on July 12th covered the problem of the lack of critical thought in today’s society.
Just days ago, it covered the rise of socially acceptable knowledge in place of actual knowledge. The
next day I came across this story on the Orlando Sentinel web site. It was published the same day I
was trying to illustrate the lack of thought that cushions much of society from the sharp rocks of
reality.
The author, Mr. Thomas is probably a very bright person. Even if he isn’t, his editors should be
reasonably bright. Yet, the following commentary was published in the Orlando Sentinel, and
presumably Mr. Thomas was paid for it. It's long, but fairly illustrative of what I was trying to convey.
Let’s examine the editorial and see how the dictate to “test everything and retain what is good,” fairs
under the microscope. The formatting has been changed with all paragraphs, italics, and bold modified
to make it more readable.
If illegal immigrants go, produce prices would skyrocket
Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
11:18 p.m. EDT, July 12, 2010
"We are drawing up our own version of Arizona's immigration law. Gubernatorial candidate Rick
Scott — running on a platform that he will kick out more illegal immigrants than Bill McCollum —
wants it passed in a special session this month. Then we can get down to the round-up.
The problem is this. If we kicked out all the illegal workers today, Florida orange juice would cost
$20 a gallon next week and probably be nonexistent next year. Our entire agricultural industry would
collapse. Here is why:
Kansas doesn't care about illegal workers. A farmer there simply hops into his combine harvester,
slips some Pink Floyd in the CD player, heads out to the fields, and returns three hours later with
15,000 boxes of shredded wheat ready to go.
Florida farms, however, grow oranges, watermelon, beans, squash, tomatoes, bell peppers,
cucumbers and so on. These require pickin'. That requires lots of bodies — bodies that climb, bend,
and stoop for 10 hours a day in the Florida heat with no overtime, no group health and no 401(k)
plan. Native-born Americans, wimps that we are, stopped doing this work long ago."
The first paragraph covers the idea that Rick Scott and Bill McCollum are running with the position that
they will be tough on illegal immigration. It also states that Florida is drawing up a similar version of
Arizona’s immigration law and the desire is to pass it in a special session this month. Then it ignores
any consideration of the proposed law, the necessity of that law, the impact of that law, the provisions
of the law, or the cost or impact on the state of Florida from illegal immigration. Instead is the sneer of
“Then we can get down to the round-up.”
Now the second paragraph brings up what seems to be the main complaint of Mr. Thomas. We can’t
do without illegal labor: “The problem is this. If we kicked out all the illegal workers today, Florida
orange juice would cost $20 a gallon next week and probably be nonexistent next year. Our entire
agricultural industry would collapse.” Well, by that line of reasoning, imagine how cheap O.J. would
be if we paid them nothing and simply chained them up. Is that the business model promoted by Mr.
Thomas?
Or, going the opposite way, if they were suddenly legalized and paid appropriately, with all the taxes
and deductions, what would the cost of O.J. be then? Or is the $20 figure simply pulled out of the
imagination of Mr. Thomas like the statement that Florida’s agricultural industry would collapse? If
Florida is dependent on the exploitation of the downtrodden, maybe it should collapse.
There is an inherent conflict in Mr. Thomas’s position- one that does not trigger any introspection. One
position is incompatible with another. Mr. Thomas is advocating the continuation, or legalization, of
illegal immigration by arguing the continued exploitation of the same labor is the financially necessary
thing to do. If they were legalized, would the farmers still be able to employ them? Or would it be
more cost effective to fire them? Is the only reason they are there in the fields in the first place because
they are paid in cash and incur no other costs? Mr. Thomas, shining knight of Florida’s illegal
immigrants, might suddenly throw the entire lot out of work. He would turn people who are working
for a living into unemployable wards of the state in the name of…saving Florida’s ag industry? Saving
Florida’s economy? That is, allowing the assumption that Mr. Thomas knows anything about what he
is talking about in the first place. That comes up next:
“Kansas doesn't care about illegal workers. A farmer there simply hops into his combine harvester,
slips some Pink Floyd in the CD player, heads out to the fields, and returns three hours later with
15,000 boxes of shredded wheat ready to go.
Florida farms, however, grow oranges, watermelon, beans, squash, tomatoes, bell peppers,
cucumbers and so on. These require pickin'. That requires lots of bodies — bodies that climb, bend,
and stoop for 10 hours a day in the Florida heat with no overtime, no group health and no 401(k)
plan. Native-born Americans, wimps that we are, stopped doing this work long ago.”
It is painfully evident that Mr. Thomas has no idea about agriculture. What he has, is the second flaw
covered in the last column, conventional wisdom. He thinks in Kansas farmers pop into their
combines and simply zip around like they are mowing the lawn. Is it that simple? How much do
combines cost? Is that the only equipment they need? Do Kansas farmers dig Pink Floyd? Do they
sweat commodity prices, fuel prices, fertilizer costs, seed costs, land prices, the weather, the aging farm
population, taxes, production loans, regulations, erosion, the fixing of markets by foreign countries,
disease, off farm work availability, and the views of Florida journalists?
How accurate are his views on Florida agriculture when he has shown no more knowledge of plains
farming than a New Yorker from the Upper West Side? How backwards is Florida agriculture? He
mentions oranges, watermelons, beans, squash, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, etc. Do any other
Southern states grow these items? Arizona does. And, as this piece leads off, Florida is seeking to join
Arizona in the enforcement of immigration law. According to the Arizona Department of Agriculture:
“The top agricultural crop commodities in Arizona are lettuce, cotton and hay. Lettuce production
represents 14% of the state’s total farm receipts. Yuma, Arizona is the winter lettuce capitol of the
world. Cotton produced 553,950 bales representing 6% of total farm receipts for the state. Hay was
5% of farm receipts.” And: “Arizona ranks 2nd nationally in its production of cantaloupe &
honeydew melons, head & leaf lettuce, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower and lemons.” Hmmm,
sounds like they could use some illegal farm labor to keep the costs down. I wonder why they want to
kick out illegal immigrants?
Let’s contrast Arizona with Florida from the Florida-agriculture.com web site: “Florida ranked first in
the United States in the value of production of oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, sugarcane for sugar
and seed, squash, watermelons, sweet corn, fresh-market snap beans, fresh-market tomatoes, and
fresh-market cucumbers.
Florida ranked second in the United States in the value of production of strawberries, bell peppers,
and cucumbers for pickles.
Florida ranked fourth in the value of production of honey.
In 2008 Florida accounted for:
-- 71 percent of the total U.S. value of production for oranges ($1.5 billion)
-- 68 percent of the total U.S. value of production for grapefruit ($179 million)
-- 52 percent of the total U.S. value of production for snap beans ($172 million)
-- 51 percent of the total U.S. value of production for sugarcane for sugar and seed ($448 million as
of 2007)
-- 44 percent of the total U.S. value of production for fresh-market tomatoes ($622 million)
-- 40 percent of the total U.S. value of production for bell peppers ($267 million)
-- 39 percent of the total U.S. value of production for cucumbers for the fresh market ($94 million)
-- 29 percent of the total U.S. value of production for watermelons ($140 million)
-- 27 percent of the total U.S. value of production for tangerines ($58 million)
-- 21 percent of the total U.S. value of production for sweet corn ($157 million)"
That is mighty impressive. I wonder how much of that agriculture is technologically advanced? Mr.
Thomas doesn’t indicate how important to the various commodities is cheap illegal labor unchecked and
unapproved by any labor laws. You would almost think that Mr. Thomas is in favor of repealing the
minimum wage law and almost all labor rights advances of the Twentieth Century.
But he isn’t. It is obvious that Mr. Thomas is not in favor of enforcing immigration laws. What is also
clear is that Mr. Thomas is working up to the theme of the editorial, and it is not his own thought. This
view has been floating around for some time and is now a standard talking point Mr. Thomas can adopt
as his own, in place of an original thought.
“To prove that point, the United Farm Workers has begun a campaign called "Take Our Jobs,'' in
which members of Congress are encouraged to refer their constituents to vacant farm jobs. Even
with unemployment close to 10 percent, there haven't been many takers.
There are no hard numbers for the number of illegal workers. I've heard that between 70 percent and
80 percent of the field hands are illegal. They do the dirty work, dirt cheap. And then they turn the
picked crops over to the legal workers — the truck drivers, the processors, the bottlers, the salesmen,
the managers, the accountants, the marketers and so on.
There also are the mechanics who work on the trucks, the people who supply the farms with fertilizer,
seeds, pesticides, irrigation, fences and machinery. There is the crop duster and the fruit inspector.
There are the universities that provide the research. There are the government bureaucrats who live
off the taxes. If you think Florida is in bad shape now, subtract oranges and tomatoes from the
economy.”
To start, you couldn’t have a better friend as an illegal alien than the United Farm Workers… unless, it
could be the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Those guys are an even better friend to
illegal workers. When the Swift meat packing plant got raided, the UFCW protested. This is the
portion of March 14, 2007 column "Jesus as Union Propaganda"
"...Remember the recent Swift company immigration raids? The ones done to meat packing plants
that rounded up all the illegal aliens? It was vehemently opposed by the United Food and
Commercial Workers International Union. Ms. Cashen, a spokeswoman for the union had an
interesting bit of press in an interview with the Salt Lake City Tribune. At one point she indicated
that wages used to be higher twenty years ago and that meat cutting was a "cold nasty and dangerous
job". The union represents workers at five of the six Swift plants. "When wages were higher there
were no staffing issues."
Now according to the article applications are up 75% because the plants have to offer higher wages
while "Cashan said the group strongly opposes such raids." Well what do you think of that? Wages
were $18-20 dollars twenty years ago. Now the wages, because of illegals, were hovering around $9
an hour. Good thing the union was there. Otherwise the company could have cheap labor and not
pay benefits because they were using illegals. Oh wait, that is exactly what happened. Now with the
raids the wages go back up and applicants extend around the block. What did the union do? Protest
the raids. Way to look out for the little guy. Any more raids like that and wages might keep going up-
unless the union intervenes. But then, did the illegals pay union dues without having a union vote?
Seems a win/win for labor and the company."
This is history repeating. The first lie of the United Farm Workers is that no American would do the
job. What they won't do is the job under the conditions the illegals are forced to work. Why would
they? Mr. Thomas was already describing the horrendous conditions under which the people labored
for little money. Like the meat plants, raise the wages and suddenly, there would be a line around the
block for the jobs. After all, Mr. Thomas described all the other jobs in agriculture that are staffed by
Americans. He provides a laundry list of them. Why would anyone think there would be no takers on
the very last segment if the pay was decent?
There is another lie sitting right there in that segment, one that is unrelated to the overall article.
Unemployment figures are bogus. It doesn't take conventional wisdom to realize the fact that the way
unemployment figures are formulated is constantly changing. The numbers are unreliable. While all
evidence indicates they are much higher, that is a supposition. Not having any standard of evaluation
has destroyed the context for figures. While Mr. Thomas states that unemployment close to 10%, a
quick check of Floridajobs.org stated the June seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Florida was
11.4%. Not knowing how these figures jibe with reality, it is every bit possible that if Florida was to
divest itself of its illegal aliens, jobs would become available in the agriculture industry for some of
those 11.4%. So, even as there is a decrease in burden on state resources, more Floridians could be put
to work.
Going back to the topic we go from purposeful lying to gossip: "There are no hard numbers for the
number of illegal workers. I've heard that between 70 percent and 80 percent of the field hands are
illegal." Mr. Thomas, if he has "heard" anything, shouldn't be so gullible. How much farm labor is
legal migrant labor? How could the union, which he seems to admire, allow scabs to destroy the labor
market in their chosen field? Has Mr. Thomas no skepticism at all? This returns to the original flaw in
thinking. Mr. Thomas does not examine seemingly conflicting information. He simply absorbs from
his surroundings and then presents ideas as if they are his own.
Finally he promotes the idea that an industry that is so powerful a producer for the country would
collapse with the removal of indentured labor. A similar argument was made by Jefferson Davis on the
eve of the Civil War in his speech to the Confederate Congress April 29, 1861:
"...In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent,
and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful
religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race, their labor had been so directed as
not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds
of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous
people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and
population under the social system of the South;... and the productions in the South of cotton, rice,
sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves
was and is indispensable had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports
of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man."
It is the same argument. While Mr. Thomas has a different motivation for making that argument, it is
the same. No amount of spluttering indignation will alter the premise set forward that agricultural
production is dependent on cheap labor from people not integrated into society. Mr. Thomas may not
be arguing for slavery for illegal aliens, not on purpose, but he is arguing for the necessity of a similar
system for Florida. Mr. Thomas doesn't see the inherent conflicts in his thinking. Pseudo-knowledge
and the conventional wisdom are dangerous when combined.
"So, can we pick the crops legally? Well …
The government has created one of those Federal Bureaucracy Gone Wild programs. If a farm wants
to hire an immigrant, it has to file multiple forms, pay fees, wrestle red tape, get hit with various
costly and ridiculous requirements, and then go fetch him from across the border. It is one of those
"We're from Earth and Washington is from Mars" deals.
So instead, the workers already here get bogus identification papers and the farms hire them. Don't
ask, don't tell and pass the tomatoes. This system is so big and so broken that the feds couldn't crack
down if they wanted to. Crops would rot in the fields while paper-pushers at the U.S. Department of
Labor drowned in application forms."
Reading the above section you could make the following statements:
1. The Federal Government is awash in bureaucratic paperwork that hamper private business.
2. Illegal aliens are forging papers and stealing identities to obtain work that allows them to work on
farms.
3. The immigration system is overly large, unworkable, and the Federal Government doesn't want to
enforce the laws in the first place.
4. If people waited on the Federal Government, the private industry would collapse.
So follow up that line of reasoning with Mr. Thomas's conclusion: "So I'm not seeing how the Arizona
law fits in. It allows a cop who stops someone to question his legal status if the cop suspects he may
be in the country illegally. Probable cause here would be any Hispanic with sweat on his brow and
dirt on his hands."
Back to flawed thinking like a magnet. If the Federal Government is unable and unwilling to deal with
illegal immigration and the impact on states' economies, then the state must intervene to protect itself.
That is how the Arizona law fits in. How could you possibly miss that conclusion? It is doubtful Mr.
Thomas has read the Arizona law that prohibits racial profiling or has any respect for the cops in his
own state. His reflexive idea is that all cops are racist who will immediately target Hispanics. It appears
there are no honorable cops in Florida. It appears there are no minority cops in Florida. I wonder if
there are any police at all in Florida with the names like Hernandez or Flores? To Mr. Thomas it
appears all of them are racist, jack booted thugs who are only waiting to rush out into the farm fields to
bludgeon women and children and force them into exile below the border. It doesn't appear that Mr.
Thomas puts any more thought into law enforcement than he does agriculture.
"There is a better solution pending in Congress. It is the AgJOBS bill. It would allow farm workers
who have a track record to get temporary worker status. For the next five years, they would work
hard, pay fines for being here illegally at our wink-wink invitation, pay taxes and obey the law. Then
they would get permanent status, as in a green card. That would entitle them to keep picking our food
for $10 an hour.
It's a win-win and has bipartisan support. One of the sponsors is Rep. Adam Putnam, a Republican
running for commissioner of agriculture in Florida. It would have passed by now except too many
other Republicans are scared to death of supporting any bill that doesn't call for kicking down doors
and pulling people out of cars.
Maybe a $40 salad bar would change their minds."
Like the end of an operation, the dissection of his article is almost in sight. Mr. Thomas wants an Ag
JOBS bill. Think he has read it? Just curious. But the premise is funny. "It would allow farm workers
who have a track record to get temporary worker status. For the next five years, they would work
hard, pay fines for being here illegally at our wink-wink invitation, pay taxes and obey the law. Then
they would get permanent status, as in a green card. That would entitle them to keep picking our food
for $10 an hour." How does someone with forged papers and a stolen I.D. have a track record? If
they work hard for five years, aren't they already working hard? Isn't that just a platitude to appease
the redneck crowd? Why should they pay fines for being here at our "wink-wink invitation"? Pay
taxes and obey the law? Like not being here in the first place?
Why do you think they want to pay taxes? What makes you think they want permanent status? That's
a pretty big supposition! Has Mr. Thomas ever talked to illegal aliens? Has he ever talked to the cops?
Has he ever talked to the farmers? How many of those illegal aliens want to be Americans, and how
many want to make as much money as they can and go home to Mexico, or Guatemala, or Honduras,
and be wealthy there? Mr. Thomas thinks he is being noble and moral allowing them to pick produce
at his set price of $10 an hour and pay taxes and fines. What do the illegal aliens think about his
proposal? Has he run it by any of them? Maybe they don't want to see almost half their income
lopped off in state and federal taxes. Maybe they like the all cash economy.
Finally, the $40 salad bar throwaway line is no more real than the $20 O.J. that started the article. It's
pathetic and a fitting end to what was a dismal exercise in the lack of critical thinking. It has no
foundation in reality and is the hyperbole of a writer with nebulous views absorbed from others and
regurgitated on the pages of the Orlando Sentinel. I feel sad that such a column could possibly be
influencing readers who can't discern the immense flaws. But it was a valuable and timely example of
the last article here on The Quiet Conservative on the lack of critical thinking. For that I have to thank
Mr. Thomas.