Michael Erickson’s Professional Background Is Not So Clear
November 30, 2010 by Johnny
Filed under 2012 Ballot Measures
As we continue our research into the proposed 2012 Arizona-style anti-immigration ballot measure currently working the supermarket-parking-lot-petition-circuit, we wanted to find out out a bit more about Michael Erickson, the brains behind the operation. Oddly, there is not a lot of readily available personal information about this guy, and what we did find was contradictory and confusing.
Here’s what we know:
Erickson’s Linkedin profile lists his occupation as “Political Organization Professional” but shows no other work history or professional achievements other than his Chairmanship of the Sonoma County Republican Party from 2006 until 2010. His profile also claims he attended Santa Clara Law School from 1995 until 1999, but does not reflect whether or not he earned a law degree. A thorough search of the State Bar of California website does not list Michael Erickson as a member. This means he is not licensed to practice law in the State of California. This would not be a big deal except that he publicly holds himself out as an attorney.
In the footer of an October 5 press release from Erickson:
Michael Erickson is an attorney and chairman of Support Federal Immigration Law Committee, the sponsors of the initiative.
In a bio for a right-wing speaker’s bureau he is identified as a “lawyer”:
As a lawyer, Michael has pursued the legal practice both professionally and politically. Professionally he has worked in insurance and securities litigation and construction and environmental law. Politically, he has used his legal experience to defend property rights, working on cases involving eminent domain and property taxes. He has devoted much of his time and energy to preventing infringements of constitutionally protected liberties within the context of land use conflicts.
Erickson may be sensitive to this possible misrepresentation, since in other interviews he has eschewed the lawyer tag. In a November 23rd interview with the San Diego Tribune, Erickson is identified as a “legal researcher.” In another story, published the next day by the Sac Bee, Erickson is identified as a “business consultant”, which is also how he identified himself in an October 6 interview with KPCC. In that same interview with KPCC he claims to have a law degree, but admits that he is “not licensed to practice law.” Confused? We are too.
Then there is the total image makeover. The bald shot is from the speaker’s bureau website, the other one is from Erickson’s hilariously-URL’d website called supportimmigration.org .
Headshot from Newsguests.com
Headshot from Support Immigration.org
We have no problem with the image makeover, and frankly we like that he’s enlightened enough to embrace he’s receding hairline (some of us here at Johnny California aren’t there yet). But the new look ties into the larger issue: The unclear professional history, his public identification as a lawyer and subsequent reclassification as a “legal researcher” – then it seems he changes his tune again and calls himself a “business consultant.” Something is odd here. We’ll keep looking.
Illegal Scabs
In the tradition of the working class movement the scabs have always been considered the lowest form of life on earth;however,today ,”progressive” petty bourgeois intellectuals are attempting to convince the workers that they should support the illegal scabs who usurp their workplaces to the detriment of unions,wages,labor laws,safety rules and working conditions in general.The petty bourgeois intellectual takes this position because his/her job is not threatened by the mostly illiterate scabs;he/she only cares about cheaper goods at the store and cheaper gardeners,maids and drugs.Besides,he/she has a job protection since titles from foreign universities are not valid unless they’re validated by a filter exam in the United States,in English.However,Barack Obama is starting to change that at the elementary school level by the proliferation of “charter schools” (scab schools) with public funds and private administrations that are destroying the teachers’ unions and regulations thus,illegal scabs will have access to these jobs too.
The twisted logic of the scabs’ advocates claims,among other things,that the “undocumented workers” only take jobs that U.S. workers don’t want=FALSE: the illegal scabs have taken most of the jobs that the U.S. corporations can not ship abroad: Construction,meatpacking houses,hotels,restaurants,automated machine shops, warehousing ,etc..The union hiring halls that once existed in U.S. cities,where workers could get a job at union wages,have been replaced by the “Centros de Jornaleros” where contractors,often also illegals,hire scab labor.Most of the jobs that were covered by the U.A.W.’s contract have been outsourced to machine shops around the country who employ illegal scabs at a third of U.A.W.’s wages.The same’s happened with the meatpacking houses and other industries where the corporations,by different tactics,got rid of unions and today are running the plants with scabs.
The twisted logic continues by claiming that the illegal scabbing benefits us all=FALSE:It only benefits U.S. corporations by lowering their cost of production.
Furthermore,the twisted logic uses a lot of touchy-feely stories,appealing for compassion, about children and separated families without clarifying that these people who came illegally to the country to take U.S. workers’ jobs leaving them homeless and,ever more,sleeping in the streets of U.S. cities, this scum, certainly, doesn’t show any “compassion”.
Some labor unions have been complicit in the scabbing operations by setting agencies in Mexico and Honduras to recruit illegal scabs as part of their strategy of collaboration with the corporations.The misleadership of these unions is composed mostly by intellectuals graduated from universities who never worked in the trade but got a job in the union hall and climbed to the top from there;their only interest is to collect the union dues.
The illegals who break the border laws,not only break the labor laws,they also break the traffic laws,putting in danger the lives of U.S. citizens on the road;they also break tax laws while demanding services paid for by U.S. taxpayers and often they also break drug laws by trafficking drugs from Mexico to the United States.
The requirement that only U.S. citizens or legal residents are allowed to work in the United States is a workers’ gain and U.S. workers must defend it by any means necessary.
There are workers in Mexico who fight for better conditions in their country and who risk their lives in this fight but the illegal scabs have no dignity.As a disgusting twist this scum marches on May Day in a sea of U.S. flags as a big display of their obsequiousness.
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