Evil & Stupid
10th May 2023
ZMan turns over a rock.
Congressman Thomas Massie (R-Agribusiness) is waging jihad against his fellow Republicans in the House over H.R. 2, an immigration bill that has been working through the House since January. He has specifically targeted the E-Verify provision, that would require employers to use the system, which has been in place for decades, to verify that their employees are legally allowed to work in the country. He has been on Twitter railing against the E-Verify system.
There are two schools of thought as to why Massie has picked out this provision of the bill as his reason for opposing it. One is the old “Republicans donors like cheap labor” argument, which is mostly true. Massie gets a lot of money from agribusiness, which relies on illegal aliens to work in meat packing plants, commercial farming enterprises and food processing facilities. What you never find in a food processing plant these days is anyone speaking English.
The other explanation for Massie’s berserk opposition to this provision is that he is a libertarian who spasmodically opposes government programs. He has been dressing up his arguments in libertarian jibber-jabber. He claims that Joe Biden will use the system to prevent normal Americans from working. According to Massie, this program will require you to get permission from Joe Biden in order to work, which is a weird claim, but consistent with libertarianism.
In fairness, both explanations could be true. In order to get into the House of Senate, you have to be willing to take bribes from the donor class. The reason both parties support the current chaos is because both parties have the same paymasters. Those paymasters think borders are bad for business, so they oppose anything that would result in an orderly border policy. Hiring libertarian goofballs to be the messenger on this makes it look principled, rather than cynical.