I met with Hispanic social activist Anton Flores for a second time Wednesday in LaGrange, Georgia. \u00a0 He said a key to the immigration issue is looking at the systemic issues behind the poverty and violence that drives many people to flee Mexico and Central America. \u00a0 Flores said this is often “structural.” \u00a0 That is, the wealth in many of these countries is concentrated in the hands of a few with much of the rest of the populace living in abject poverty. \u00a0 This in turn, spawns gang wars, drug violence and other forms of civil unrest among the poor. \u00a0 So the answer then becomes an intense focus on these secondary issues — as opposed to looking at plans for a redistribution of wealth so that everyone has enough. \u00a0 Flores said that if he was involved with helping make U.S. policies toward these countries south of the border, he would work to end NAFTA, CAFTA and U.S. military aid to these countries. \u00a0 Correspondingly, he would try to help mobilize more humanitarian help into these countries to help people become as sustainable as possible. \u00a0 LaGrange’s Bruce Krieger would agree… \u00a0 I gave a talk at LaGrange College the night I talked to Flores. \u00a0 During the “town hall meeting” format, Krieger said it makes absolutely no sense spending billions of dollars “killing people” in Afghanistan and Iraq, when we could be “bombing people” all over the Third World (and in poor areas of America) with humanitarian aid, in order to help them become more sustainable and to cut down on potential hot spots worldwide… \u00a0 During the talk, a reporter for the Troup County News asked me about the economy. \u00a0 I said there is currently a 10% unemployment rate in the country. \u00a0 Our administration would work to make it 0% (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), quick. \u00a0 How? \u00a0 Job sharing. \u00a0 That is, we’d create incentives for some businesses to go to “job sharing” formats. \u00a0 (Some companies already do this.) \u00a0 One template would be for one employee to work two and a half days a week, with another employee coming in at 1 p.m. Wednesday afternoon and working the other two and a half days. \u00a0 This would entail some people coming up with creative ways of cutting back on their lifestyles with things like house sharing, cutting back on energy use, on transportation, on entertainment, on non-nutritional junk food… \u00a0 As an addendum, I also said the job sharing would free up more time for faith, family and community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I met with Hispanic social activist Anton Flores for a second time Wednesday in LaGrange, Georgia. \u00a0 He said a key to the immigration issue is looking at the systemic issues behind the poverty and violence that drives many people …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}