The bird house story was intrinsically cute and amusing. There are some
big holes in it however, as far as its relevance to (human) politics.

 First, birds have no capacity for benefiting from public education, or
from producing offspring who can contribute to society. Birds aren't even
capable of learning English. They didn't start cluttering around this
bird feeder because there was no food where they were from. They weren't
there because they were seeking a better life. They're birds. The point
is that if you remove the feeder, the birds will fly elsewhere, while if
you remove social services, you don't remove poor people; you make them
more desperate.

 The other problem is that if used to give weight to political views, this
story completely misses the point. Approximately one quarter of the
federal budget goes into services for both brown AND white people, in the
areas of Education, World Hunger, Health, Human Services, and the
Environment; basically, the services which actually help improve the
quality of life and the capacity to improve it. Over half of the budget
goes to the Pentagon, fighting both real pork barrel wars and theoretical
wars such as the cold war. About 60 billion $ a year goes into fighting
the cold war, by maintaining the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. In
fact, the U.S. spends more on its defense budget than the rest of the
entire world combined (see: http://truemajority.org/csba/priorities.php).
Maintaining an excessive military doesn't help anyone besides the CEOs of
defense contractors. Re-directing even the $60bil cold car budget into
Education so that more children living in ghettos and Mexican border
towns can learn to read and write English, into giving poor children
health insurance, into enforcing environmental laws, etc., would actually
help Americans.

 To accentuate my point, I have just written my own story, in response to
the "Bird Cage" story. Here it is:

 ---

 George, a hard working carpenter who lived in the small U.S.-Mexico
border town of Columbus, New Mexico decided to open a neighborhood
convenience store with money he had saved up over the past few years.
George's neighborhood, Crestwood, was the only completely white
neighborhood in Columbus. George was sick of frequenting stores whose
employees primarily spoke Spanish, and he figured his neighbors were too.
He hired Levi, a white  teenager, to man his store while he worked.

 Levi enjoyed the independence of being the sole worker in the convenience
store. At any given time, several of his friends would be hanging out at
the store to pass the hours with him. Levi frequently let his friends
grab a soda and some candy for free, as he only made minimum wage, and
most of his friends were essentially freeloaders who lived in their
parents' basements. The cost of candy was low, and Levi considered it one
of his "perks".

 As time went on, Levi grew more and more confident in his ability to get
away with "taking a little off the top". He made a regular habit of
giving away not just soda and candy, but packs of cigarettes, cigarette
rolling papers, and periodicals of ill repute.

 George may have suspected something earlier, but he had found himself
developing more of an alcohol habit than that he had previous to opening
the store. What used to be drinking several beers to unwind after a hard
day at work became grabbing cash from the store after work and
frequenting bars for an hour, to a few hours, to staying until 1:00 A.M.,
the time the bars were required to close by law. George began to sleep in
later and later, and was able to take fewer jobs as time went on.

 Some of the customers Levi served were white people from the local
neighborhood. Many of them however were Mexican workers of questionable
legal status. They performed various physically exhausting, low-skilled
jobs for twelve hours a day in the hot New Mexico sun for below minimum
wage. The residents of Hillcrest were more than happy to get a bargain on
improvements to their estates. Most of the Mexicans had no access to
public education or any social programs, but making enough to buy enough
food to sustain their lives and sleeping in alleys was still more than
they could have hoped for in their home land. Some of them also had
children who would have access to public education, so that they would at
least have a chance to earn a better living some day. This kept their
parents going as they worked themselves to near death every day. Stopping
by the convenience store which was now close to their jobs gave them some
small sense of independence and self-worth as they bought cheap snacks to
eat on their lunch breaks.

 Levi didn't mind the Mexicans stopping in the store, but one day, some of
the Mexican teenagers, who were known gang members, stopped in. Levi and
his friends watched silently one day as the gang members took cigarettes
and sodas off the shelves. Levi and his friends dared not say a word as
the gang members calmly walked out of the store with their stolen goods.
This happened about once a week.

 One day, George's vicious cycle of working less and taking more money
from his store to take to the bar caused him to find himself against the
wall, being given ultimatums by creditors and suppliers. One day, reeking
of whiskey, George walked in to his store for a surprise visit. He kicked
all of Levi's friends out, who were reclining on the coolers and counters
drinking their free sodas and smoking their free cigarettes.

 "THIS STORE IS LOSING MONEY!" George yelled at Levi, "AND I WANT TO KNOW
WHY!". In a panic, Levi nervously explained that there were some Mexicans
who he had some suspicion might have stolen some items from the store
when he wasn't looking. "I KNEW IT!" exclaimed George, "Our government
lets those scum in to our country, but I'll be damned if I'll let them in
my store!". George bought an expensive video monitoring system and hired
a security guard. Under George's instructions, the new guard would follow
any Mexican who entered the store around and watch them like a hawk. He
told Levi to take his time ringing Mexican customers up. Levi began to
intentionally ring Mexican customers up for a few dollars more than he
should have. Sometimes they would not notice, and Levi would pocket the
extra cash. When they did notice, they would not get anywhere pleading
their case to Levi, and they did not speak English and Levi did not speak
Spanish. Levi's friends would laugh and make fun of the Mexicans as they
left.

 Eventually, the convenience store lost all of their legitimate Mexican
customers. The combination of this loss with George's alcohol problem and
the insatiable thirst for cigarettes and soda on the part of Levi's
friends led to a foreclosure on the building George's store was run in.

 George lost his construction business too. He now spent his days doing
temporary light industrial work. Most of his time however was spent in
the Crestwood neighborhood bar. He spent the rest of his life telling
fellow white residents about how the illegal Mexicans ruined his business
by shoplifting, and how hard it was to make a living doing temporary
industrial work with all the competition from illegals. His stories built
grass roots momentum among local voters, which led to new legislation
which denied the children of Mexicans who were born in the U.S. access to
education. These children went on to join the ranks of the gang members
who had been instrumental in Levi's scapegoating. Crime in the small town
grew exponentially. A few years later, George was admitted to the local
hospital for liver complications. He spent his last weeks refusing
treatment by any doctor with less than white skin (Indians included). He
died an angry man, but died with some sense of worth, as his
perserverence in his beliefs had at least led to some changes within his
town.




 Adam



> I bought a bird feeder.  I hung it on my back porch and filled it with
> seed.  Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the
> continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.  But then the birds
> started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and
> next to the barbecue.
>
> Then came the poop.  It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs,
> the table...everywhere.  Then some of the birds turned mean: They would
> dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own
> pocket. And others birds were boisterous and loud: They sat on the feeder
> and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and night and demanded
> that I fill it when it got low on food.
>
> After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore.  I took
> down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone.  I cleaned up
> their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.
> Soon, the back yard was like it used to be...quite, serene and no
> one demanding their rights to a free meal.
>
> Now let's see . . . our government gives out free food, subsidized
> housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to
> be an automatic citizen.
>
> Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands.  Suddenly our taxes
> went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families;
> you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor; your
> child's 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the
> class doesn't speak English.
>
> Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to press "one" to hear
> my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than "Old
> Glory" are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more
> rights and free liberties.
>
> Maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.