THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Updates To Previous Posts
† Illegal Immigration Discombobulates Environmentalists: The Supreme Court ruled the Department of Homeland Security has Congressional authority to invoke wavers of environmental laws and regulations to expedite construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexican border, reports The Associated Press:
The case rejected by the Court involved a two-mile section of fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The section has since been built.
Earlier this year, Chertoff waived more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest border. Administration officials have said that invoking the legal waivers - which Congress authorized in 1996 and 2005 laws - will cut through bureaucratic red tape and sidestep environmental laws that currently stand in the way of fence construction.
† Dem Documentaries Coming To A Theater Near You?: MSNBC is creating MSNBC Films, to commission, finance and market feature-length documentaries, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
The movies will generally fall into subject areas that MSNBC already covers but may also push the definitions. "We're constantly expanding what we're interested in reporting on," said Michael Rubin, the network's vp longform programming. …
At a moment when theatrical platforms for docs seem to be shrinking, the announcement marks more commingling between the worlds of cable TV and documentaries, as A&E, Discovery and HBO all produce and air feature-length docus.
It also reflects a continued blurring between longform news programming and docus.
And because MSNBC makes no effort whatever to conceal it’s far-left sympathies, expect these “documentaries” to blur the line between objective truth and lefty propaganda as well.
† Pay-Go A No-Go? (second item): The House voted 233-189 to give 22 million taxpayers a one-year reprieve from the alternative minimum tax, reports The Associated Press. Because of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s commitment to “pay-go,” the $61 billion revenue shortfall caused by the proposed legislation will be offset by higher taxes on oil companies and hedge fund managers. The Senate opposes increasing taxes to pay for the AMT relief. Citizens for Tax Justice says the average tax relief would be about $2,300, with about two-thirds going to households with incomes of $127,000 or more.
† GA Judge And Family Accused Of Slavery: In yet another case involving domestic slavery - this time in NY - multi-millionaire perfume manufacturer Varsha Sabhnani, 46, was sentenced to 11 years in prison for forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude and harboring aliens in a case involving two Indonesian housekeepers, reports The Associated Press. She must also serve three years' probation and pay a $25,000 fine.
Her husband Mahender Sabhnani, 51, was convicted on the same charges because the allowed the abuse and benefited from the women’s labor, and is expected to get a lesser sentence.
U.S. District Judge Arthur Spatt has not yet decided how much back wages are owed to the women – they were paid $100 a month for 17-hour days with no days off, which comes to roughly 20 cents an hour – but federal prosecutors are pushing for a sum north of $1 million. The couple could also be forced to forfeit their home, valued at almost $2 million.
According to testimony, one of the victims began working in the Sabhnanis' Muttontown, LI, home in 2002, the other in 2005. Their passports were immediately confiscated. Jurors wept as they heard how Varsha Sabhnani beat the women, Samirah and Enung, with brooms and umbrellas; slashed them with knives; scalded them with boiling water; gave them so little to eat they had to forage for scraps from the garbage; forced them to climb up and down stairs over and over, and to take freezing showers; and made Samirah to eat chili powder and dozens of chili peppers until she threw up - and then to eat the vomit.
The Sabhnani’s lawyers intend to appeal the conviction, and contended the two women made the whole lurid tale up to pursue more lucrative opportunities, and that they may have inflicted the injuries they described in court on themselves during witchcraft rituals.
The New York Times reports on the multicultural aspect of the case:
Dilip Ratha, an economist at the World Bank who has studied migration patterns of laborers from the developing world, said the case fit a common template for the many workers who leave countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia for wealthier nations so that they can send their earnings home to their families.
“Such arrangements are not uncommon, and even though there has been a good deal of government regulation of guest-worker programs in some places, some of these patterns of financial abuse have been institutionalized by now,” he said. …
While they were working on Long Island, Samirah and Enung were typically paid by Mrs. Sabhnani’s mother through transactions in Jakarta … Samirah’s compensation, for example, went directly to her daughter … The trial testimony painted the Sabhnani household dynamic as less upstairs-downstairs than a case of third world feudalism transposed to Long Island.
Update: Mahender Sabhnani, 51, was sentenced to 3 1/3 years and fined $12,500. Judge Arthur Spatt said that while Sabhnani did not personally abuse mistreat the women, he must have been aware his wife was abusing them.
† ICE Hopes To Have Chilling Effect On Illegal Immigration By Targeting Identity Thieves: Federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 160 employees – primarily from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras - in a raid on Action Rags USA, a used clothing and rag exporting concern in Houston, reports The New York Times. Robert Rutt, special agent in charge of the Office of Investigations for ICE in Houston, tells The Times that the raid was the culmination of a yearlong investigation into the company’s hiring practices for possible criminal prosecution. Rutt says that such raids are aimed at changing the “culture of corporations to change.” William F. Estes, who said he was the company’s attorney, protests, “If we have an illegal employee, we don’t know it. … Tell us what the law is, and we’ll obey it.”
Editorial Note: The New York Times, which makes it a point to explicitly state that one of the people interviewed for the article, Maria Lopez, is a legal resident; the paper does not give the immigration status of another interview source, William F. Estes (it’s a safe bet that ICE agent Robert Rutt is a citizen).
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