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Reporter's Notebook: Stephen Peacock

Race to the Bottom

Posted by Stephen Peacock - July 20, 2007 at 6:32 pm
While the following "discovery" admittedly is low on the breaking-news food chain, I find it somewhat interesting that U.S. Customs & Border Protection this week issued a call to potential vendors capable of cranking out 25,000 t-shirts replete with an unspecified "race car shape" color image, presumably representative of the duties of this Department of Homeland Security unit.

My question for readers is this: do you think this mystery race-car image will entail a driver running over and smashing illegal immigrants? Or, do you envision -- as I do, dare I say -- the image of a U.S. Chamber of Commerce-sponsored racing vehicle, speeding past (or perhaps even picking up and giving a ride to) aliens en route to distant restaurants, farms, or landscaping companies on behalf of corporate Chamber members seeking a pool of cheap labor arguably at the expense of U.S.-born workers?

About Stephen Peacock

Biography
I'm a former Washington, DC, journalist (1998-2003) who most recently worked for Communications Daily and Washington Internet Daily (WID), investigative newsletters that cover the telecommunications, broadcast and Internet industries. Following the 9/11 attacks, my news beat expanded beyond Capitol Hill telecom/TV/IT policy and began to include technology-policy coverage at the Pentagon and Dept. of Homeland Security. I've written over a thousand articles about government and industry affairs, and I'm pleased to say that I was the reporter who broke the story about the Total Information Awareness surveillance/data-collection initiative of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. I've written articles for publications including NACLA Report on the Americas, Drug Enforcement Report, Corrections Journal, SoJo Mail (Sojourners), and the Tampa Tribune. I've also written a memoir about my former career as a plainclothes security officer of the Helmsley Palace hotel in New York City, Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze. I look forward to contributing to the fine work being done here at NarcoSphere.

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