NY-26: Jack Davis Smackdown At The Batavian
The Batavian, a new Genesee county community website smack-dab in the middle of NY-26, has a piece on how out-of-touch Davis is on one of his main campaign planks: his vicious anti- immigration rhetoric.
Aside from the fact that Davis is using right-wing rhetoric and tactics to bash immigrants and migrant workers– a questionable tactic when his immediate target should be core Democratic voters– he appears to be hitting the wrong notes.
Part of his anti-immigrant rhetoric centers around migrant workers, as he suggests that farmers should employ local unemployed people instead. The whole article in the Batavian is worth reading, but here’s a key part:
Here’s what he’s promoting on his own website. “The farmers claim they need more foreign labor to pick those crops and some have asked for more visas for immigrant farm workers. But with our high unemployment, how can we justify hiring someone other than our own unemployed to do this work?” Its obvious Jack hasn’t heard any of the problems the local growers have had in recent years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21491778/ Does Jack really want to add to the risks that farmers already brave every year? Or was he that clueless about where he was when he made that statement? As rarely as he goes out on the trail, it might’ve made sense for him to do a little background research on the GLOW region. Agriculture is the backbone of our local economy. Now, Jack says he wants to deny our local farmers the labor force they depend on to get their crops out of the fields or orchards and onto our tables.
And a commenter there brings up a drawback to Davis’ idea that I’d never even considered:
And Mr. Davis is showing us he doesn’t well understand the nature of farm labor, which is governed by a chief feature of being migratory. Is he suggesting the local unemployed be willing to pull up their local roots and follow the crops?
They would pretty much be required to do so, because while farm labor is hard, manual labor, farmers also prefer hiring experienced works for their specific crops, because they are likely to do less damage and be more productive. Such expertise might be easily learned, but it also takes experience to master.
This highlights what Exile was saying yesterday about conservative “rhetoric” vs. progressive “facts”, and underscores a belief I’ve had for a long time– that conservative ideology is embraced by folks who just haven’t thought conservative ideas through to their logical (or il-logical) conclusion. Conservative ideas: Sound good, seem simple, don’t work.
Related posts:
Kos has just named Jon Powers to their “Orange to Blue” list. I know he was being considered, but can only assume that the latest smear tactic (fake website) from crazy Jack might have pushed Jon to the front page.
Six weeks til the primary, folks. Let’s get those feet & phones busy getting the primary vote for Jon, so we can send Davis home for good.
Jane
PHONE BANKERS NEEDED!!! Please contact the Powers campaign for where you can go to be a part of the phone bank. http://www.powersforcongress.com/
speaking of that fake website, here’s our smackdown over at tap:
http://www.thealbanyproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3830
From the Powers Campaign:
This weekend, we are continuing our two per week canvas schedule. We will be canvassing in Avon on Saturday, starting at 10 am. We will meet over at the Tom Wahl’s on Rts. 5 & 20. Meanwhile, we’ll be heading over to Batavia this weekend as well for a canvas; the exact time is being determined.
I was so infuriated that Jack Davis had a “look and feel” site on Powers I decided to pull the WHOIS on the website. I am not posting the website name out of respect for Powers. The WHOIS is registered to Erick Mullen. For those of you who don’t know Erick Mullen is a Beltway Political consulting idiot.
His website is http://www.mullenandcompany.com. He has a laundry list bio of working for other Dems. I thinking that they might want to distance themselves from Erick and his website. Also under the “What We Do” section it shows a series of YouTube videos two of which are Eric Massa’s. I am almost certain Massa would want to distance himself from these kind of tactics as well. Absolutely disgusting tripe from the Davis camp.
mullen also ran a pro-hillary 527 during the primary that also almost certainly broke the law.
Eric Massa hasn’t had anything to do with Mullen since 2006. The vids are probably last cycle. There is a reason he hired Paul Novak this cycle - local consultant who knows the district.
Glad to hear.
[...] Last week we linked to The Batavian, a new web-only enterprise from Gatehouse Media. Rotten has a fairly extensive discussion of what this means: The Batavian has a number of differences from traditional newspaper Internet properties. First, it has no printed counterpart. Batavia has a daily newspaper, the Daily News, which has no real website. The Batavian leaves the more lucrative print market to the Daily News, but it also avoids the expensive investment of a printing plant. [...]