So far as most of us can tell, the “economic stimulus” plan issuing from The Office Of The President-Elect (snicker) includes the most staggeringly pants-pissing amounts of cash to prop up failing corporations, banks and executives, and jack for the rest of us, unless we’re prepared to summon up some cajones and engage in a little good old-fashioned shop-floor smackdown, like those laid-off screen-door plant workers in Michigan.

On the local level, here in DC, as Inauguration Day – or, as now known to some, Barack Obama Day – approaches, The One’s economic stimulus program for DC has finally begun to jell; according to The Office Of The President-Elect (smirk), this plan will take a two-pronged approach: one prong for the quite well-off, and another big prong for the rest of us…

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Some weeks back, I was checking out this article on Associated Press about skyrocketing home foreclosure rates in Los Angeles and the equally skyrocketing number of people forced to live in their cars…

I couldn’t help wondering what the cops and city councils in L.A. and other cities plan on doing when the number of foreclosed and unemployed living in their cars starts to equal the number of people who still have houses or apartments. Will the pissed-off suburbanoids who still have their houses still complain when they start seeing ex-neighbors or ex-coworkers among the homeless “trash” living in their cars?

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So, as usual, I’m waking up one morning last week to find that my wife already has the morning news on. It’s CNN’s “American Morning”, just wrapping up a piece on the rebellion in Burma, and following it with one of those obnoxious, cloying Chevron Oil “human energy” ads and, though way too early, my foggy brain starts going “Burma… Chevron… Burma… Chevron… ” …and, as usual, a train wreck of dissonant ideas in my early-morning REM state causes inspiration…

More on Chevron’s involvement in Burma from the “Oil Change” Web site.

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So, it seems a bunch of yahoos in various state and county legislatures are bound and determined to rid the place of “illegal” immigrants — “illegal”, that is, in the sense of legality randomly pulled out of some racist politician’s ass about a century or so ago. Of course, “illegal immigration” probably ranks right up there with “intellectual property” on the all-time list of concepts totally pulled out of the asses of politicians.

So, Fine. Just fine. Go ahead, make life so miserable for them that they leave. Hell, why not just deport ‘em while you’re at it, if it’ll make you feel better…?

Great. They’re gone. Congratulations. So, who’s going to build your houses and fix your streets? Who’s going to clean your office building at night? Who’s going to do your landscaping work? Who’s going to be your nanny — especially at the wages they’re paid for these jobs, and considering the crap they have to put up with from employers. Most of your average Americans sure wouldn’t take those jobs because of that; either that, or — more likely — they’re all on their sofas waiting for their phones to ring with an offer to be Donald Trump’s Apprentice, or perhaps keeping their options flexible in case that lucrative position as an American Idol Winner comes open.

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