Whoa…McCain gets booed defending illegal immigrants by saying that Americans won’t do the same jobs illegal immigrants would.
You don’t understand how much I want to yell out MCCAINS AN ELITIST. I can’t believe McCain would basically call Americans lazy and then offers $50..Y&^@&*#^&* never mind heres the video,
##UPDATE##
Finally have the video, to see what McCain looked like while trashing America,
Ok now that I have calmed down. I was about to say that McCain says he would give $50 AN HOUR, to Americans to go out there an pick lettuce. What the hell, illegal immigrants don’t even get that much money and if they did then there would be riots in the street, with Lou Dobbs leading the riots.
I for one would never pick lettuce because Im not used to manual labor, but could you imagine, millions of working people out there. They would quit their $8 an hour jobs to pick lettuce for $50 an hour. I believe at the time he was trying to defend his immigration stance, but come on, I don’t even think the most liberal of liberals would think something like this. There are many unemployed people out there who would die to have a job right now, to have some money to pay for food…and this is what he thinks.
Ok Im going to have to cut this short, before I burst open.
Also, what does he mean by he’ll give us money to work the whole season and not just one day. Most Americans go a year or so without a vacation because they have bills to pay. Also the fact that McCain can just give away $50 AN HOUR proves he is nothing more then an elitist pig. My personal views is that we shouldn’t be giving excuses for illegal immigrants and workers who hire them. My reason for this stance alone is not because they take jobs away for legal Americans. Illegal immigrants get treated unfairly, they don’t pay taxes, at times they don’t get proper medical care, they get paid less because their illegal, they are subjected to horrible working conditions and the list goes on. If legal American citizens were paid $50/hr or $8/hr to pick lettuce, Im sure we wouldn’t be subject to the same horrible working conditions as illegal immigrants are being paid now.
McCain is really out of touch and doesn’t understand what Americans, who aren’t rich, have to go through. OK, seriously this time Im done writing.
##UPDATE##
Heres the transcript from a Q&A with construction and building trade unions,
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Now, my friends, I’ll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you’ll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So — OK? Sign up. OK.
You sign up. You sign up, and you’ll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can’t do it, my friend.
WordPress.com Political Blogger Alliance
sensico
Yilian
Vivian
Marc
45 Comments
Actually for $50.00/hr. that’s not a bad wage however he did say Yuma & guess how hot Yuma, AZ. gets during the time of year he is talking about? It is a literal h..l hole but this is not as hot as having to crawl into an attic @ the height of AZ summer heat as a Air Conditioning technician does. This shows you how-out-of-touch he is, as these A.C.techs maybe get between only $13.00 to $18.00/hr. Be aware that McCain’s state of AZ. is a “right to work” state which means the employer does not contend with Union standards for pay & benefits. It really is quite ugly how blue collar workers are exploited in AZ. & this has nothing to do with having a cheap Mexican work force just the ammoral exploitation of workers not being protected by a Union. Hate to break it to you in AZ. every non-union worker is treated like a Mexican day labourer.
People who don’t have to work in a hell hole for $50 an hour should be admired not lectured about those unfortunate souls who are forced to work in a hell hole for pennies.
Yes, we are too well off according to McCain, we won’t work in a hell hole for $50 an hour. He says this jetting around the USA with his billionaire wife from one of their six mansions.
He has the gall to ask for working sovereigns to vote for him?!!
This is ridiculous. This video needs to go mainstream, McCain is such a fraud. VOTE BOB BARR 08
I would pick anything anywhere for $50 an hour, are you kidding?
I dont know about Barr but as a used to be republican Im sure not going to vote for McCain. He is such a lying pig
McCain is such an elitist. If hes so willing to offer us his millions of dollars to pick lettuce then why isn’t he doing it now.
McCain is a joke. I would also pick lettuce for $50/hr but the problem is that no one in America is going to get paid $50 and hour to pick lettuce.
I agree with most of the comments but I want to add that McCain is really out of touch with everyday working Americans if he even thinks that people would get paid $50/hr picking lettuce. The fact that he think American’s aren’t hardworking enough to want to pick lettuce to put food on the table is also very discouraging.
I can’t even call myself a McCain supporter anymore. Im just undecided now.
Where do I sign up for lettuce picking? I can be in Yuma within the hour.
well, at $50/hour, most Americans will no longer be able to afford groceries. This is irresponsible.
I like how at the end he says “…because you can’t do it, my friends.” What is he a racist now? I can’t do it because I’m not a campesino? I could do it, and would for $50/hour, as long as it was steady work at least 9 months out of the year.
interestingly enough I used to work with a man whose parents came to the country as illegal immigrants and eventually were able to become citizens… he had a lot of family members that were illegals and working in the country and said contrary to popular belief most of the DO pay taxes because they sign up for work with a fake social security number and its taken out of their paycheck automatically. Now some people like day laborers and farm workers may be paid under the table and therefore dont pay taxes but I see this as a problem with the employer and not the employee.
Also… Mccain is a friggin jackass… Im so tired of him calling people “my friend” in his stumps.
How do I call Mr.McCain and sign up to pick lettuce at $50 a hour? Did I hear him right, he said he would pay anyone that would sign up? What right does he have to say, we can’t do it?Sounds to me as if he’s putting Americans down, saying we’re lazy when it comes to physical labor…Hey, that offends me and should offend every American, how dare he!!! McCain, is that why big American Corporations are moving out of the USA, because Americans are lazy? I think not, they’re enjoying having the Chinese as legal slaves, some that get $20 a day to work, eat and sleep in their factorys. American won’t stand for sweatshops if they find them, but,we will let the “big” boys go to China and have them in order to save $$$$$….McCain, you owe all Americans a apology.Also, I hope someone calls you on this and you have to eat your words…
$50 hr to pick lettuce? Where do I go for his job? I only make $15 now!
How can Mccai GVE people $50 an hr. Is he trying to become poor so he can understand pain and suffering?
Office number is 303-952-4670
I called his office and left a v-mail asking where I and many of my other American friends can sign up for this great offer. I did leave my number. I wonder if he’ll call back.
It was the ‘we can’t/you can’t’ kind of statements that got me upset over Clinton’s candidacy.
I wonder if I can pick that lettuce for $50 an hour even if I wasn’t there. Because there must still be some openings if Americans CAN’T pick the lettuce for the WHOLE season. What a great offer.
He is amazing for his out of touch quality. How ’bout the comment that folks are rich if they earn $5M? I put a reference to that on my blog.
Well I just contacted Mr McCain and took him up on the offer. Lets see if I get contacted.
Curious, does McCain own the lettuce farms he offering jobs for? If he doesn’t and he’s paying out of his pocket, then wouldn’t it be tax free?
Rich if you make $5mil,dam right you’re rich, I’d be rich with $1mil..
Hey, I’m attracted not so much by the $50 but to the physical work involved.
although I’ve calculated my hourly value to be around $150.00… this Real Work still make sense!
It’s like getting paid to exercise!
Hourly Value Calculation:
How much I value 1hr of excercise : $200.00
How much I am paid $50.00
My 1hr value : $150 (my opportunity cost per hr)
Net gain : $100.00 ($200 + $50.00 – $150 )
McCain new lingo “AMERICANTS”(no really is this guy for real?) As a Canadian I really feel for the gulible idiots who voted with revenge in your hearts for more lies. Me thinks you all deserve this phoney bastard.
Peace
Does this include the air fare to Uma? I’m in!
First, I hear Phil Gramm a good friend and consultant to McCain call Americans “whiners”. Now I hear J McCain calling Americans lazy.
The DNC needs to jump on this right now.
Every voter should hear THIS truly elitist language from the true elitists!
Where and when was McCain speaking when he said this? It seems like it could have been taken out of context, but if not it does seem pretty bizarre.
Talk about “out of touch,” McCain has no clue how the “other half” lives! If one of his MANY HOMES isn’t an assisted living facility, it should be!!!
re: McCain new lingo “AMERICANTS”(no really is this guy for real?) As a Canadian I really feel for the gulible idiots who voted with revenge in your hearts for more lies. Me thinks you all deserve this phoney bastard.
Peace
sorry, sir, but I can’t agree. SOME of us may deserve him, McCain that is, as they will have voted for him, the rest of us (the correct thinking ones) will have to SETTLE and/or DEAL with that choice of McCain being President. we will carry on and live our lives, just as we have with W being Prez. but I don’t believe this will happen at all. I do believe Obama/Biden will be the victors on Election Day this november. this country deserves the potential, the clarity, the intelligence, and the reasonableness that an Obama/Biden ticket will bring.
I am a telecommunications consoultant, and I would GLADLY pick lettuce for $50.00 an hour! I would even work 40 hr weeks! Let’s see, 40 x 50 comes to… TWO THOUSAND BUCKS A WEEK! No only is McCain out of touch financially he can’t do SIMPLE MATH.
You all miss the point. McCain is simply stating that Americans complain about immigrants, and ignore the fact that they do a lot of work that americans would never consider doing because they’re too proud and/or lazy. He’s not serious about people making $50/hr to pick lettuce, he’s exaggerating to make a point. It’s called hyperbole.
The problem lies in the fact that Americans want to pay dirt cheap prices for goods, but don’t realize that means the people producing them can’t ever make “good” money doing it. Try making $50/hr as an AC Tech, Catchum, and see how many customers you have–they’ll all start calling your competitor who’s charging $18/hr.
But again, the point he’s making is that even IF lettuce picking paid good money, Americans would still refuse to do it, because it’s too hot and too hard of work. Without hard-working immigrants, America would suffer. We make excuses about the wages being too low, but we’re really just not up to admitting that Americans often don’t work because they’re just too lazy, or too proud to take the jobs that ARE available. (BEFORE YOU ALL FLAME ME, this is a generalization, and certainly not true of many hard-working Americans out there. Just pointing out that while there are legitimate unemployment problems, there are also circumstances where laziness and pride play a BIG part)
We could, very quickly, and easily, bankrupt McLame. Imagine if even a few thousand people took this challenge. That’s a few hundred thousands of dollars PER HOUR out of McLames’ OWN pocket!
And, though he was speaking to Americans, the challenge wasn’t limited to Americans, How would he know if anyone listening was an American? Imagine, John McLame – badly damaged, former profession plane crasher (4 times? 5?) paying Mexican illegals $50/hour to pick lettuce for some farmers. Then the irony that the farmers probably vote Democratic!
He was meaning that people are used to being in a nanny state either not working hard(life if hard so just working isn’t necessarily working hard) that they wouldn’t do the jobs even if paid 50 dollars an hour. Of course that’s crazy people would under those conditions. But they would rather work at McDonald’s than in a field. We could live with out illegals easily. But we can’t live with them.
Yeah, if McDonald’s paid $50/hr
I would absolutely pick lettuce for $50/hr. I’m an artist – how long is the season? I could pick lettuce a few months out of the year, and make art the rest of the time… not to mention get lots of exercise and a fantastic tan. What the f***.
For $50/hr., I will hire part-time teenagers at $25/hr. to cover the shift and pick the lettuce, and I will pocket the other $25 as the “contractor”.
What a complete ass. Not only is he accusing Americans of being too high and mighty to work but he is saying that all of our shit jobs should go to immigrants. How amazing that he’s able to simultaneously piss off both natural born citizens and immigrants at the same time. Somebody give this guy a prize for being the biggest out-of-touch ass to ever run for office.
ok as a young child my dad invested in 2-4 acres of proactive fertilization of his grain acreage he used in the fall and spring to graze his cattle. What that meant for me and my lil bro was 2-4 acres of blackeyed peas to pick over the summer.
Trust me when I say this the only people to last more than a couple of days in the Texas heat ( the evil summer of 1980 was during this time 60 + days over 100 with 30 plus in a row) WERE Mexican kids who could take the back breaking labor and the heat from dawn to 11 or so and then 6 til day (10ish).
So in my personal experience 99.99 % of the native born Americans could NOT and would NOT picck crops for ANY wage let alone 50 bucks an hour.
We as a country ARE lazy spoiled whiners- the fact you the blogger is whiny about being called out on your laziness proves my point.
Gramps is out of his mind. Sign me up.
Well, he may be right. Maybe I can’t do it, since I’m not an American. But I’m sure the hard working people of American who value hard work and honest living would manage just fine.
Senator McCain: I’m surprised to hear those words come out of your mouth.
Where do I sign up at? I got a 60k medical bill that medicare will not pay for so I must pay the greedy bastards some how, and 8.25 hr will not do it. When is the bus leaving?
McPain in the ass will never honor his wager of $50 per hour. I’d just get one of those balloon headgear you put in the freezer and wear it to work.
So where do I sign up at? It’s worth the 300 mile drive.
Foodserviceninja, I pour concrete for a living, pushing wheelbarrows with 500lbs. of concrete in them and most of the time it’s over 50 yards to where it goes and last month it was 96degrees with 78% humidity, I did this for 15.5 hours and I do this regularly around 70 to 80 hours a week for $16.00 an hour. Not everyone in this country has easy work and to be honest, picking crops would be a walk in the park compared to what I do for a living and BTW, I’ve picked tomatoes for a local farmer every season before returning to school so I know what thats like and trust me, I could pick lettuce for $50/hr. The reason Americans want to pay cheap prices is because not many people make a decent wage to afford to pay higher prices at the store. If most Americans were paid a living wage, they would buy higher priced american products but instead we settle for wal-mart because the Employers that stay in this country have to “compete” with foreign competiton that pays low wages and those foreign workers can live on what they make because most have a national healthcare policy so most of their paychecks don’t toward medical insurance. Americans buy cheap because of what most jobs pay and because we pay 50 to 150 dollars a week for health care so what choice do you have? I’m insulted by McCians remarks, he just wants his big-business friends to be provided cheap labor and using farm work as an example is just an excuse.
Lettuce doesn’t grow in Yuma in the summer. It grows and is harvested in the winter. The climate is quite nice. FOr $50 an hour lots of people would do it.
The USA is becoming a police state.
Evidence
It is disappointing that so many of you totally missed McCain’s point. If you are so gullible as to believe the pablum in Obama’s change rhetoric, God help your small minds! You all need to grow up and possibly go back to school to learn new vocabulary to replace your vulgarity.
Paramedics where I live make 7.20 per hour. Bank Tellers make less.
Patriot, the concept of Americans not wanting to do certain jobs is the most asinine excuse to defend exploitative immigration policies. It’s highly offensive. While there may be some people who wouldn’t pick lettuce for $50 an hour, or couldn’t, it wouldn’t take $50 an hour to fill those jobs.
On the other side of immigration, I’m a U.S. citizen currently living in Argentina, because I married an Argentine woman, and because I don’t meet the financial requirements to sponsor her paperwork (This would require moving to the U.S. without her and working for at the very least one year and four months, a full tax year plus processing time,and earning 125% of poverty level for household of two, because while she would be eligible to work, we have to prove that she doesn’t need to) she can’t come with me to the U.S. I think this is a violation of my rights as a U.S. citizen to marry who I choose, and because of my own lack of wealth.
What a jerk. This guy is seriously out of touch: American go to the war zones for less hourly rates than this. Let me see, um $50 hour to pick lettuce and sleep in my own bed with my own family around me every night or $50 an hour to go get shot at in Iraq?
14 Trackbacks
[...] August 23, 2008 McPain Sez….. Posted by Sovereign John under Analysis, available data Video: McCain “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr” [...]
[...] this McCain really be this out of touch to even flippantly offer blue collar Americans $50 an hour to pick lettuce in a feeble attempt to prove a point that we need illegal [...]
[...] Source Article [...]
[...] I read this post today, and it really got me irked. Apparently John McCain (rather astutely) observed that illegal [...]
[...] American’s Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr John McCain defends illegal immigration. Video: McCain “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr” Sensico Way to go John, you really show your true strips as an out of touch elitist asshole! [...]
[...] Posted by greenpartyaz John McCain defends illegal immigration. Video: McCain Americans Wont Pick Lettuce for $50/hr Sensico Way to go John, you really show your true strips as an out of touch elitist asshole! … is what [...]
[...] Hat tip to Sensico [...]
[...] Source for Later. McCain “Americans are Lazy, Spoiled Brats” (paraphrased) Video: McCain “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr” « Sensico [...]
Wednesday, August 27, 2008…
Hillary nailed it. Her speech was strong and sincere. I watched and understood how hard it must have been for her to have to support someone with whom she had been in a fierce competition for the most powerful job in the United States of America f…
[...] “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr Video: McCain “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr” Sensico MacSame says we need all these illegal immigrants because Americans “arent willing to pick lettuce [...]
[...] the McCain camp – Sarah Palin, and her wacky views on abstinence only education. We also talk about John McCain and his strange discussion with union workers. We run through the RIAA and the silly policy of having schools as [...]
[...] http://sensico.wordpress.com/2008/08/22/video-mccain-americans-wont-pick-lettuce-for-50hr/ [...]
[...] Effectively Debunks McCain Ad” Digg.com, TPM post and Michael Moore’s for the post – Video: McCain “Americans Won’t Pick Lettuce for $50/hr” Good times, good stuff here. Some of the fun things here was going “live blogging” or [...]
[...] I don't know anyone who has said "no one would take those jobs" about the meat packing plants. Those used to be good jobs that paid well. But in the early 90's the industry started closing existing plants that employed Americans at a good wage and opened new, much larger processing plants that were staffed with a lot of illegals. They cost less and they couldn't complain when told to work under unsafe practices. This is an excerpt from a Rolling Stone article that ran ten years ago and is still kicking around in my head. If you can track down the whole thing it is a great read. I also think it's the right with a history of saying that no American would do jobs typically filled by illegal immigrants, or at least it was last year when John McCain said that Americans wouldn't pick lettuce even if you paid them $50 an hour. [...]