Sponsors Back-Pedalling on Employer Sanctions

Link: Employer sanctions law challenged by sponsors.

Looks like a number of Republicans are getting crosswise on the employer sanctions law now that it has taken effect and real enforcement actions seem imminent, threatening to put good, upstanding (and possibly Republican) businessmen on skid row.

This issue just screams DEMOCRATIC WEDGE ISSUE FOR 2008 STATE LEGISLATIVE RACES at the top of its lungs. I hope it’s not too much longer before every other word coming out of the Arizona Democratic Party’s mouth-piece is "employer sanctions." You don’t get monumental political fuck-ups like this dropped in your lap every day, you know.

Much more after the flip…

I note also that among the list of now shamefaced enforcement enthusiasts on the GOP side of aisle, such as Konopnicki and Flake, one will not find the name Bee (who was a sponsor of the legislation). Is Tim Bee having any second thoughts over his role in assassinating Arizona’s economy in the name of immigrant bashing? Was the care and feeding of the GOP’s groundlings worth the cost now that Arizona, and the rest of the country, are sliding into recession and facing huge deficits? Somebody should maybe ask him?

I also note with amusement, and even some merriment, the shivs being stuck quite publicly into tender, private places within the Republican ranks over this law, such as the following gem:

Boys, boys, don’t fight… No, actually, go ahead. I won’t deny that a naughty little knot of Schadenfruede is tickling my cockles. Makes one want to kick up one’s feet and grab a box of popcorn the better to enjoy the coming internecine bloodletting as the persecution of Arizona’s economy rolls along, and the GOP eats its own.

I just love Konopnicki’s vision of real illegal hiring practices:

"Psst. Buddy, I got some primo Sinaloans. Real strong product," whispered the shady labor dealer.

"Sounds good, I’ll take 50 for a day…" Jim Johnson felt nervous doing his business on the street like this, it was the middle of night on Miracle Mile for goodness sake, what would the guys at Rotary think? But he needed these day laborers to load his trucks. He didn’t consider himself a criminal, but once you got a taste of what these cheap Mexican laborers had to offer, it was hard to quit.

"Hey man, how do I know you’re not a labor cop?" hissed the swarthy, disreputable, cash-only, non-tax-paying employment agent.

"Manny knows me. I’ve done business with him before," said Jim, the naughty, naughty businessman who probably cheats on his taxes, too.

"Okay. $5,000 cash up front, the other half on completion. And don’t pay no taxes on that, man!"

Just then a spotlight ripped through the night to pin them in its actinic light, like bugs frozen in white-hot amber. A stentorian amplified voice crackled out, "Freeze scumbags! You are surrounded. Place your hands behind your head and interlace your fingers."

"Oh, shit! It’s the labor SWAT team! You’ll never take me alive coppers!" The swarthy employment agent reached for his slide rule as his body was riddled with hot lead…

Should it really surprise anyone that the scenario that Konopnicki paints as the model of an illegal labor deal looks so much like a drug deal?

Both represent a failure of regulatory imagination, trying to make what the market demands go away with magical incantations of the law. In both cases, the attempt at prohibition is immensely more damaging and costly to society than the effects of the contraband alone. And both represent the fundamentally brain-dead approach to governing that conservatives so often adopt: use government to try to simply ban anything you don’t like, and punish the crap out of anyone who steps out of line. They choose such policies primarily because they are conceptually simple and familiar, symbolically and rhetorically powerful even when ineffective, and place the costs of the policy squarely on the least powerful in our society.

Only this time, they forgot to apply the punishments only to the powerless. This time, the powerful are in the cross-hairs of their harebrained scheme — and the powerful don’t much like that.

For people who claim to be committed to limiting state power and eliminating government interference with free markets, they sure seem to act perfectly contrary to those stated beliefs pretty regularly, don’t they? Makes you wonder who the real conservatives are.