Cynthia Matthews Revisited

I'm getting a lot of hits because of 2004 posts (example) about Cynthia Matthews, so it's appropriate to report this 2006 California primary news:

---

Congressman David Dreier won his primary with 65 percent of the vote, well ahead of second place finisher Sonny Sardo, a La Cañada Flintridge business owner. Cynthia Matthews won the Democratic primary by 2,500 votes over newcomer Russ Warner. American Independent Elliot Graham and Libertarian Ted Brown won their primaries, as well.

---

While John and Ken aren't promoting her this time around, Matthews (now known as Cynthia Rodriguez Matthews) is certainly campaigning:

---

Responsibility and hard work are our nation's greatest strengths. Leadership is needed to provide the protection of Labor, best schools for our children, growth opportunities for businesses, healthcare for the elderly, fiscal responsibility for our future, safe neighborhoods for our families and a clean environment for all. We need leaders that believe the same.

---

Matthews' issues page has a whole section devoted to labor. Here is what Matthews says about the threat to workers' wages from illegal immigration:

---

---

One candidate who said a lot about illegal immigration is Sonny Sardo, David Dreier's opponent in the Republican primary. Here are the post-primary updates to Sardo's website:

---

---

And here's how Ted Brown chooses to do battle against Dreier:

---

David Dreier, our bachelor ongressman, has become married to big government.

---

You would think that the capital L Libertarians wouldn't care about Dreier's bachelor status, but I guess they'll use anything.

Incidentally, here's Brown's perspective on immigration:

---

IMMIGRATION
My immigration policy is written on the base of the Statue of Liberty:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

People all over the world want to come to the United States to escape political repression, economic stagnation, and other kinds of persecution. This has been the case for almost 400 years, since the first colonists arrived. One of my great-grandfathers was a Lithuanian Jew who fled anti-Semitism in Czarist Russia in 1890. Another great-grandfather fled forced military service in Germany in 1904.

Current immigration laws are completely arbitrary. There are legal immigration quotas for each country. Those numbers could be changed with the stroke of a pen. Current immigration procedures favor the better educated and connected. A Mexican doctor from Vera Cruz would go to the U. S. Embassy and apply for legal immigration. A poor field hand from rural Mexico wouldn’t know about that; he would just hitch a ride to the border and try to cross. It should be easy for people to come here to work, and to go back and forth across the border as needed. We need immigrants to pick crops and work in other important jobs that American citizens don't seem to want.

The main problem with free and open immigration into this country is that there are far too many taxpayer-funded services that the immigrants can take advantage of. This includes health care, welfare programs, education, etc. Libertarians would deny services to immigrants – but also to citizens. We believe in very limited government. So if immigrants want to come here and work, and not expect anything from the taxpayers, the restrictions should be removed.

---

Brown's echo of Bush's "jobs that American citizens don't...want" is expected for a Libertarian, who would promote a complete free market in which wages could go up or down without restriction. Of course, the Libertarians couple this with "but you're not going to get any services either, because NO ONE will get services." Certainly a different way to look at things.

From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here)