Republicans Should Lead Immigration Reform

Bill Bennett's speech on the state of Republicanism is a great speech!

Republicans, like Pogo, have met the enemy and it is us.

We are what we are characterized as, the party of No, because we haven't put together a coherent plan of action, only knee-jerk reaction.

I appalled some Republicans at a fun get-together when I mentioned my plan was basically to throw open our borders to anyone with a clean record and the desire to work, invest, and/or innovate. What we are doing now is the reverse of sensible immigration policy. We can't secure our borders first, then do something, because it's impossible to secure our enormous border with Mexico, and after almost a century of futility, it seems we would know that and not make it a precondition to doing anything substantive about immigration. It just makes us look like all we can do is  employ delaying tactics.

A recent study shows that every 100 new immigrants produce over 250 new jobs. When they are here legally, they also pay more taxes, use less welfare, register their cars, insure their cars, get drivers' licenses, buy more homes, commit fewer crimes, are victims of fewer crimes, &etc. 

When an immigrant with a clean background comes in, they should get a green card if they want one. No questions asked. If they don't commit crimes and stay off welfare, learn English and American government and history, they should be candidates for citizenship after 5 years. Of course, anyone here now illegally would have to start the five years when given a permanent legal status too.

Our system right now cannot be changed to the point where we can control our border with Mexico effectively, so why try? We need their labor, it is good for our economy, even though they are unskilled and uneducated. Get everyone established in a legal status, and open up coming here to other country's best and brightest , to join those already here. Foreigns who are skilled and educated are on very tight quotas and face waiting periods up to 10 years or longer. They can't take the illegal alien approach and sneak in, because the work they are  best qualified to do, and the investments they could bring, can only be accomplished with legal status.

We need to get out of the immigration box, and the Democrats are stuck in one too. They don't want a flood of highly skilled, educated, entrepreneurial people, they want the ones they can control and organize into reliable voting blocks. Success in our free economy hurts the Democrats, and they know it would help Republicans.

Arizona Adopted California and Oklahoma Immigration Laws

All the liberal anxiety aimed at Arizona's new tough illegal immigration law is surprising, since I don't remember any of it when California passed a law years ago almost the same as Arizona's.

the California Penal Code actually requires that every law enforcement agency in the state shall "fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws."

Below is a copy of section 834b of the California Penal Code that deals with immigration law enforcement at the local level.

(a) Every law enforcement agency in California shall fully cooperate with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding any person who is arrested if he or she is suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws. (b) With respect to any such person who is arrested, and suspected of being present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws, every law enforcement agency shall do the following: (1) Attempt to verify the legal status of such person as a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted as a permanent resident, an alien lawfully admitted for a temporary period of time or as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of immigration laws. The verification process may include, but shall not be limited to, questioning the person regarding his or her date and place of birth, and entry into the United States, and demanding documentation to indicate his or her legal status. (2) Notify the person of his or her apparent status as an alien who is present in the United States in violation of federal immigration laws and inform him or her that, apart from any criminal justice proceedings, he or she must either obtain legal status or leave the United States. (3) Notify the Attorney General of California and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service of the apparent illegal status and provide any additional information that may be requested by any other public entity. (c) Any legislative, administrative, or other action by a city, county, or other legally authorized local governmental entity with jurisdictional boundaries, or by a law enforcement agency, to prevent or limit the cooperation required by subdivision (a) is expressly prohibited.

The last sentence prohibits such abominations as San Francisco's "sanctuary" law.

Three years ago Oklahoma passed a similar law:

House Bill 1804 was passed by overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate of the Oklahoma Legislature. The measure’s sponsor, State Representative
Randy Terrill, says the bill has four main topical areas: it deals with identity theft; it terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

So what makes Arizona's law special? In fact, what would make any state law special in light of federal law?

President Obama was a spokesperson for those of you ignorant of federal law (apparently all Liberals fall in this category), when he said in Iowa:

"One of the things that the law says is that local officials are allowed to ask somebody who they have a suspicion might be an illegal immigrant for their papers."

If the President believes that is wrong, his complaint is with federal law, not Arizona's.

It is already federal law that an alien in the United States must register and carry certain documents with him while he's in the United States. In fact it's been federal law for 70 years.

Nor is it news to local law officers. They check the immigration status of those they stop on suspicion of a crime.

The federal government has a 24-7 hotline that's been in place for about 15 years for exactly that purpose. And it's being used more than a thousand times a day all over the country.

The defenders of the immigration law say it's essentially the same as federal law -- which the president is bound to uphold.

(The above information was provided by Kris Kobach, a lawyer who is an expert in immigration and who helped construct the Arizona bill.)

So there you have it -- grandstanding by ignoramuses, which seems to be our leaders' most highly developed talent.

Making the Army of Reconquista

“Maria, it is your patriotic Mexicana duty to make a baby with me tonight.”

“Jose, you already have esposa y ocho niños in Mexico. You send them all your dinero except for what you spend on yourself y los prostitutas. I know why you want to go to bed with me. But why do you want to make a bebé?”

“Maria, you think I am just a peón, but I am a Reconquistadore, a gallant soldier in the Army of Reconquista. And tonight I want to enlist you in this noble cause”

“Last night Juan wanted me to go to his room too, but he didn’t say he wanted to ‘enlist’ me. He used a different word.”

“Juan is a selfish pig. He told you he would use a condom, so no bebé, verdad, is that not so? He wanted you for his pleasure only, I want you to show my patriotism.”

“Jose, last night I think Juan showed me a bigger patriotism than yours.”

“Maria, la Reconquista must have babies, mucho bebés. Very soon, maybe 15 years, the babies will be big, and they will have mucho bebés. Then, in 15 more years, mucho, mucho bebés! Comprende, Maria? In 50 years California will be just like Mexico!”

“Jose, are you loco? We came to California to get away from Mexico. What will we do when California is just as bad?”

“Maria, then we will go to New York. You will like it. For now, show me your patriotism.”

Illegal Immigrants Have More Rights Than Citizens

Federal authorities just arrested 596 illegal immigrants with prior criminal convictions (LA Times), according to John Morton, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Most of them will be deported, though 22 may be prosecuted for illegal entry after previous deportation. He said the Obama administration is focused on deporting immigrants who break the law.

The sweep exposed holes in the U.S. immigration enforcement system, since 572 of the criminals, some previously convicted of murder, sex crimes, assault and fraud, had been released from jail or prison without being turned over to immigration authorities as the law requires, Morton acknowledged.

There are as many as a million such criminal illegal immigrants in the U.S., Morton said.

The sweep illustrates the hypocrisy of the Obama administration towards immigration enforcement as it dithers over responding to Arizona’s law. Obama officials say they are focusing their efforts on people convicted of crimes, but acknowledge that they continue to remove noncriminals.

Meanwhile, the administration is also facing criticism from Congress that it is not aggressively enforcing immigration laws. In response, officials say they are removing a record number of immigrants, about 400,000 per year. A majority of those have not been convicted of crimes.

Arizona proposes doing what the federal government does poorly – enforce immigration laws. Under the legal doctrine of "concurrent enforcement," states are allowed to ban what is already prohibited by federal law. As an example, courts have upheld efforts by Arizona, California and other states to enact sanctions against employers who hire illegal immigrants.

If I were stopped for a driving violation, the officer would ask to see my driver’s license. If an illegal immigrant were stopped for the same violation and asked to show a driver’s license, that’s not racial profiling, unless illegal immigrants now have more civil rights than U. S. citizens.

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After they've seen how the other half lives)

You notice many things while travelling in foreign countries that should be obvious, but just never come to mind while living in the United States. Last month in Guatemala my attention was drawn to farming.

When I was born in 1942, about twenty percent of Americans lived on farms. Now the number is only two percent, and the number of farms has shrunk from six million to two million. Conversely, the average farm size more than doubled, and farmers produced even more food at a cheaper cost to consumers on roughly the same amount of farmland. Scientific advances, mechanization, and specialization all contributed to increased productivity, and have made United States farmers the most productive and efficient in the world.

Much of the third world is going the other direction primarily because of their continuing population explosion. More people living on the same amount of land means less land to support each person. Farming in the United States never faced that dilemma, because the Industrial Revolution provided an outlet for the surplus farm population.

In fact, industrial needs were so great that scientific advances, mechanization, and specialization were driven as much to overcome farm labor shortages as they were to improve productivity. Even with the rapid improvements in farming methods, farm labor continued to be in short supply resulting in the “Wetback Movement” (commemorated by Lalo Guerrero and his masterpiece, "The Ballad of Pancho Lopez") and later what is now referred to as undocumented immigration.

Third world cities, on the other hand, can’t absorb their farming population surpluses effectively because they have neither the capital nor do they produce sufficient energy to meet the employment needs and living standards of their burgeoning urban populations.

However, that doesn’t mean the rural poor are content to stay on their farms just because their cities don’t have much to offer. The World War I song, "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They've Seen Paree)” can be applied to the rural poor in undeveloped countries. They don’t have to travel anywhere to “see Paree.” They see Paree, and LA, and New York, and London, and the other exciting world cities on TV every day. If their own county’s major cities can’t satisfy their dreams of a better life, they soon learn that they can join the ranks of the undocumented immigrants.

Hello, Los Angeles! New York! London! Amsterdam! Paris!


How do growing populations increase the number of farms and shrink their size?

I already explained how the Industrial Revolution caused the opposite in the developed world. Unfortunately, the Industrial Revolution bypassed the countries that are home to over half the world’s population.

Suppose a farmer has ten acres, and suppose he and his wife have ten children, five boys and five girls. Because of the small size of the farm, the lack of powered farming equipment and seeds to grow scientifically improved crops, and the great distance and lack of transportation to get crops to markets, the farm is diversified and primarily produces for consumption by the farmer and his family. If the farm was larger, and access to markets was better, the farmer could specialize and grow a cash crop. But that’s not the case.

The farmer has chickens, maybe a cow, probably pigs. He has to devote some of his time, land, and crops to them, because they will provide what little protein he and his family consume. Then there are the beans and corn, nutritious and filling staples that do well in storage if the farmer is careful. During harvest periods, the farmer will have tomatoes and other vegetables in excess that don’t store well. He can sell or trade his excess, although all his neighbors also have excesses of the same crops at the same time he does.

As the farmer’s children grow, their help with the work in the house and field is very useful, since the work requires physical labor because of the lack of powered farming equipment. However, at some point each child grows to be more of a burden on the family food supply than an asset. Fortunately for the farmer, at that point each girl is old enough to get married and leave to live with her husband’s family.

It’s the boys that are a problem. They’re going to stay, and want to get married, and add their wives and children to the growing burden on the land. Further, each new, young family will want to have part of the farm for their own purposes. The ten-acre farm that barely supported one farmer and his family becomes five two-acre farms supporting five young families and the aging farmer and his wife.

After this has repeated over several generations, and the population has far exceeded the carrying capacity of the land, a revolution is necessary for land reform to take it from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, because the rich won't just give it away.

Zimbabwe provides the best current example of this. The rich landlords are killed or driven away, and their land divided amongst the poor. However, the poor still don’t have access to capital and skills to improve their farm productivity, and the former owners and their capital and skills are gone. Also gone are the wages that were paid to the workers and the contracts the former owners had to sell their specialized and abundant produce to multinational corporations.

Soon the poor farmers are back where they were before the revolution, only worse off because the country’s fund of capital, jobs, and skills has shrunk, and the aura of political instability will keep it that way.

“Global Warming” Will Cause Starvation

“I thought you said that global warming wouldn’t be a problem,” said the frequent reader of this crusading blog.

“That’s right,” reply I. “Global warming won’t be a problem. The Earth has warmed up a lot more in times past, and the effects were salubrious, particularly where agriculture was concerned.”

It’s a fact that modern civilization began about 10,000 years ago when mankind evolved from the hunter/gatherer lifestyle to the more sedentary agricultural mode. It is no coincidence that the Holocene Climate Optimum began at about the same time, and that for several thousand years the Earth was as warm, and usually warmer, than today.

Also not coincidental: the intervening warm periods following the Holocene Optimum - the Roman Warm Period of roughly 2,000 years ago, and the Medieval Warm Period of 1,000 years ago – were periods of rapid human progress sandwiched between colder periods characterized by stagnation and even civil regression.

These colder periods – the Dark Ages about 1,500 years ago, and the Little Ice Age of more recent vintage – were times of crop failures and famine; bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, and cholera pandemics; and terrible weather including violent storms, blizzards, and enormous floods.

So today we’re told by the United Nations and other panels of climate “experts” that global warming will cause starvation.

Why would it do that?

According to the experts, global warming will cause storms and floods. I guess these experts haven’t looked at historical records and found that storms and floods were more frequent, more powerful, and relatively more damaging during cold periods than warm.

Also overlooked in their zeal, famine was much more widespread and deadly during colder rather than warmer periods.

So was disease.

However, if you look into the roots of current concerns about starvation, you will see that they really are caused by global warming. Sort of.

Global warming alarmists convinced many that burning fossil fuels will cause warming through the greenhouse effect. These concerns caused frantic searches for alternatives to fossil fuels, which unfortunately gave rise to such abominations as ethanol and biofuels.

What are the sources of these alternative fuels?

Agricultural products.

What are the primary sources of food?

Agricultural products.

See a problem?

Of course, there is another threat to the poor’s food supply.

Prosperity.

Prosperity in developing nations is fueled by energy consumption.

Prosperous people consume more meat.

Livestock compete for the same agricultural products as the poor, and so do ethanol and bio-fuels.

The poor basically are left with two choices.

1) Starve.

2) Or consume more energy and become more prosperous.

But wait.

Global warming alarmists want less energy consumption, not more. In particular, they want developed nations to drastically reduce their energy consumption below current levels to the levels of an earlier period, a period when there were far fewer people, and far less energy gobbling high-technology industries.

In other words, to a time when there was naturally lower energy needs.

That’s like asking the parents of four children to cut back their food consumption and reduce their family car size to what it was when they only had two, and when the two were much smaller.

So, for the sake of discussion, the developed nations make the cuts.

However, so far only Germany and Great Britain have been able to cut hydrocarbon emissions, Germany because they got rid of old inefficient East German plants, and Great Britain substituted North Sea natural gas for their old coal-burning generators. It was like “found money.” They would have made these emission cuts even if Kyoto never happened.

But anyway, the developed nations will cut emissions, and thereby eviscerate their economies.

Only Al Gore and his Merry Band of Benighted Environmentalists are trying to sell energy cuts as painless and not as sacrifices.

Although I’m sure they know better. Big Al may sound dumb, but he’s smarter than he looks. And he’s fooling a lot of people who think they’re smart.

The big developing nations – China, India, and Brazil - will continue their rapid economic development fueled by prodigious energy consumption and increased emissions.

The undeveloped nations will stay poor and their people starve, because their source of markets and capital, the developed nations, have slashed their economies and dried up the options for poor nations to grow theirs.

So the poor now have two choices.

1) Starve.

2) Leave.

Which would you choose?

And where are they going?

Does anyone want to guess?

Making The Army Of Reconquista

“Maria, it is your patriotic Mexicana duty to make a baby with me tonight.”

“Jose, you already have esposa y ocho niños in Mexico. You send them all your dinero except for what you spend on yourself y los prostitutas. I know why you want to go to bed with me. But why do you want to make a bebé?”

“Maria, you think I am just a peón, but I am a Reconquistadore, a gallant soldier in the Army of Reconquista. And tonight I want to enlist you in this noble cause”

“Last night Juan wanted me to go to his room too, but he didn’t say he wanted to ‘enlist’ me. He used a different word.”

“Juan is a selfish pig. He told you he would use a condom, so no bebé, verdad, is that not so? He wanted you for his pleasure only, I want you to show my patriotism.”

“Jose, last night I think Juan showed me a bigger patriotism than yours.”

“Maria, la Reconquista must have babies, mucho bebés. Very soon, maybe 15 years, the babies will be big, and they will have mucho bebés. Then, in 15 more years, mucho, mucho bebés! Comprende, Maria? In 50 years California will be just like Mexico!”

“Jose, are you loco? We came to California to get away from Mexico. What will we do when California is just as bad?”

“Maria, then we will go to New York. You will like it. For now, show me your patriotism.”

Index of Posts Except Political

(Please mouse click on the red, underlined link titles to be magically transported to the articles described. I'll be glad you did. How you will feel about the process may be something else entirely, but go ahead, take a chance!)

Link to Political Posts - Politics is funny, especially when Liberals get serious.

The Galapagos Island cruise and Ecuador trip, January 2006

It's the Family After All - That is no stranger hanging on the cross.
Finding Real Beauty in the Galapagos Islands - A human mind can be beautiful too.

Point Arena Stories, 1949-1960

Big and Smart - Mom, Pop, the Runt and I
Eight-Man Football at Point Arena High - The more you goof off and take things easy, the longer you get to do them.
Jesus Saves, and the Little Red Truck - A thoughtful message from a friend I never met.
Point Arena Apprentice Poker Players - One day we thought we would be the big boys.
The Great Point Arena Fire of 1954 - Everyone likes to help
After the Summer of 1954 - You can't do a "kiss and tell," if you didn't do the kiss.
Pete Bjornavik, a Point Arena character - Fun to be around
Gopher Capital of the World? - There's a bit of larceny in all of us
1960 NCAA Basketball Championships - Thanks, "Chub" Ohleyer - A very generous man
Sweethearts Dance 1960 - Bad weather makes a special memory
Number, Please? - Personal connections before the dial telephone
Puddles the Pup - A big part of the best childhood in the whole world
You Gotta Ring Them Bells - Some wedding nights you don't forget, but you try!
After The Summer of 1954 - 7th and 8th grade, 60 students, one great teacher
The House We Built - Brother Ron and I dug the basement in 1954, with help from "Prince"
The Old High School - When we came to Pt. Arena in 1949, we lived in one big room of an abandoned high school building.
A Capsule Summary of My Life - So far, so good.
Humboldt State Lumberjack Reporter - The beginning of a nine-year, seven-college odyssey.

The Air Force Years, 1962 to 1984

You're in the Air Force Now - A very tiny thing can change a life.
It's a Gig - Sometimes the hard times are the best.
Sober Reflections on Memorial Day - Trying to find my place in Memorial Day.
They Also Served - Marilynn and our three sons were in the front lines.
England, 1970 to 1975 - My best job at my best base.
Traveling with a Water Bed - It's not often your guests bring their own.
Why Planes Break Down in Christchurch - Not just mechanical parts can delay a mission!
The Pineapple Express - Jimmuh and me have something in common.

Life in Gualala, 1998 to present

Our 2006 Christmas Letter - A Christmas letter is like a box of chocolates.
Europe Bicycle Trip of a Lifetime - When you haven't biked much, a four-month trip on bikes through Europe is a natural choice to celebrate retirement.
We Arrive in Europe - Our bike hike, continued.
Klein Gumpen, Here We Come! - Our bike hike, continued.
Uncle Jack - You're never to old to teach or to learn.
The Dublin to Tralee Train, and how Alice stopped it!
Running - Now Buddy keeps me going.
Same Time Next Year - Finding out how the other half live.
Excitement in Anchor Bay - Big doin's in a one potty town.
Mixed Company - When Alice and I stepped in, the company became mixed.

Tales of Alice

Feliz Ano Nuevo! - Wish your friends a new one! Just don't tell them what "it" is!
Alice and Vulcan Incorporated - Only in America
"Heartless" Capitalism is the Most Compassionate - Alice succeeds while France fails.
Alice's Project Complete! - It is worth it
Great Expectations - The tale of our whirlwind "story book" romance, featuring me picking Alice from a book.
The Dublin to Tralee Train, and how Alice stopped it!
Alice, the California Can Carrier - I think the Italian men liked the way she carried her can.
A Burning Desire - How lust landed me on the ski slopes
Murder by Wasabi - Was watching Monday Night Football a capital offense?
The Strong Woman Myth - In conclusion, a tribute to Alice and her daughters
Christmas Letter, 2005 - Alice had a busy year
A Fool Such As I - In a letter to the editor of our local paper, someone called me a fool. Alice didn't like that, and replied.

Some Observations

Almost Fetch With Buddy - It's a great game
Science Fiction - Where's the Science? - UFO's don't exist, and won't ever show up here. Why would they?
Really Dumb Football Players - NFL players are getting bigger, stronger, faster, and a whole lot dumber!
Garcia vs. Owens - Class Against No-Class - Jeff Garcia has class and the courage, Terrell Owens has neither
My Ancestors Owned Slaves - And I haven't.
Country and Western, Telling Life's Stories - Songs for adults.
Making the Army of Reconquista - There's more than one way to build an army of conquest!
Pardo's Push - Bravery, ingenuity, loyalty. It was an honor to serve with guys like these.
The Devil Made Me Do It - When you mess up, you have to blame someone.
Revolutionary Jesus - Seeking Truth at Christmas - It’s time for weak-kneed agnostics to stand up and be counted!
Free Will or Preordination? - Amen
Of Mensa and Me - No excuse for doing dumb things.
For Veterans Today, And Tomorrow - "For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot"
The Deadly Bigotry of Low Expectations - It's easy to live down to expectations
If I Received a Love Poem - An expanded view of love.
Greatest Baseball Player of All - Willie and the Babe, forever number one.
Fight to get Your Virginity Back! - Once you lose it, abstinence won't get it back.
Cargo Cults, Reparations, and Casinos - The dreams are alive!
Review of Global Warming, What You Need to Know - I was happy to be chosen to review Tom Brokaw's special.
Keep it Simple, Simplifiers - There are two types of people in the world, simplifiers and complicators, and you know who you are.

The Global Warming Suite (Global Warming is science, not politics, according to Liberals, so it can go in this index)

Al Gore and his Merry Band of Global Warming Deniers - In denial that global warming is natural.
Preacher Al Gore and the Global Warming Fundies - "Brothers, let me hear you say 'Hot!' Sisters, let me hear you say 'Real Hot!' What have we got!? "A lot a' hot brothers and sisters! Turn on the air conditioning!"
Global Warming Consensus is not Science - At one time scientific consensus was the earth was flat; now it's global warming is man-made.
We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period! - If Al Gore can't get rid of it, his "science" is toast
Harvard Study Disproves Unprecedented Global Warming - And Harvard is not a right-wing stronghold
Global Warming - A Stroll Through the European Countryside - Liberals should be very careful as they stroll, since they can't look down and see signs of the Medieval Warm Period. With any luck they'll fall off the "man-made global warming" cliff.
A Sign of the Coming of the Global Warming Plagues - The Gospel according to Preacher Al Gore
Science Opposed to Global Warming Theory - An Index - If you still believe in Preacher Al Gore's Global Warming after you read these articles, you really got the faith!
Ain't No Big Thing - My advice to Al concerning rising sea levels.
Chilling Out Global Warming Hype - A pre-review of Tom Brokaw's Global Warming, What You Need to Know
Review of Global Warming, What You Need to Know - Presenting the other side.
Bring On Global Warming! - Please! Before we freeze!
The Four Whorsemen Of Global Warming - There are more than four now. Maybe I can add a few by having them ride double.
Hypocrisy of New York Times and Liberals - The champions of personal liberty and freedom of the press look the other way when the Left is doing the violating.

Please click on the labels below to see all my articles on each topic.

We Need Immigration Reform

I’m sorry an immigration reform bill didn’t get passed. Maybe not this immigration reform bill, although I think that with a lot of tweaking it would have been OK.

Logically, legal immigration is good for the United States. The primary reason immigration is good for us it that immigrants fill jobs that would be vacant otherwise. Many of the jobs immigrants fill require high skills and education that too few of our citizens possess.

I recently observed that many of our “best and brightest” go to college to pursue hobbies, not professions.

Recent news articles detail how the top high school graduates are disproportionately females, and that females make up an increasing majority in colleges. Also noted in passing was that there is still a gender divide in education, with comparatively few females entering mathematics, science, and engineering.

Hidden at the bottom of a few articles is the disclosure that, among the many higher degrees our colleges award each year in mathematics and the hard sciences, very few go to American citizens.

Heaven forbid I would be critical of someone following their dream of understanding the impact of Feng Shui on California home design (I think I just was), but moreover, California needs graduates who can understand the impact of earthquakes on all sorts of California structures.

But I digress. (Not really)

What the United States needs is all of those advanced degrees in the hard subjects that Americans, for the most part, aren’t pursuing. The cutesy, kitschy things will always attract interest, and there will be a market for them, but the fundamental advances in science, medicine, mathematics, and engineering will continue to propel the largest and strongest economy the world has ever seen.

Increasingly, America’s demand for the raw materials of progress -- brain power, education, skills – will have to be imported.

In imperialist times, nations fueled the Industrial Revolution with raw materials taken from their colonies. Today we practice a benign imperialism of minds, not materials.

Benign?

Yes, benign, because the education, skills, and intelligence we import to meet our needs could not be better employed anywhere else in the world.

There are geniuses in the jungle (or the favelas, or the Sowetos of the world), but they will have to come to America to employ their abilities to their highest potential.

We also need a lot of ignorant, unskilled, and uneducated workers in the United States.

How can I say such a terrible thing?

Simple. Because we already have a lot of ignorant, unskilled, and uneducated workers here illegally.

If we didn’t want them, they wouldn’t be here.

They’re not going away, you know.

What to do then?

We could continue doing what we have done, which is to vainly try to cut off the supply at our borders, even as our demand for cheap labor goes higher and higher.

As our twelve million illegal immigrant population continues to grow ever more rapidly, it's obvious that cutting supply is not working, so what will we do?

Naturally, we will pass more laws and work even harder to reduce the supply.

Remember the definition of insanity?

Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result each time?

What are the problems with illegal aliens in the United States?

One, not knowing who is here, and where they are.
Two, lowering respect for the law by haphazard enforcement of our immigration laws.
Three, providing services paid for by taxes to illegal residents who pay little taxes.
Four, continuing a system that lowers legal workers’ wages, and allows unscrupulous employers to take advantage of illegal workers.
Five, damaging illegal workers’ families left behind, while hurting the economies of the alien workers’ native countries.
Six, making it more difficult for aliens to assimilate by confining them in illegal alien communities.
Seven, promoting a climate of “don’t ask, don’t enforce” concerning illegal aliens’ auto registration, auto insurance, and drivers’ licenses.
Eight, overloading our medical and social service systems to the point they are inadequate for the needs of our own citizens, as well as for illegal ones.
Nine, increased drug dealing and gang activities.

What are the advantages?

First, the illegal aliens do work cheaply that our own citizens shun.
Two, as our population ages, and population growth slows, illegal aliens help keep our economy growing and strong.
Three, the illegal aliens for the most part are here to work, and want to work. If not, they wouldn’t have made the long dangerous trek from their native lands.

Regardless of advantages and disadvantages, millions of illegal immigrants are here, more are coming, few are leaving, and that will not miraculously change. Therefore, we need to do something that makes sense, not just smoke and hot air.

What would that be?

First, create a virtual open door for skilled and educated immigrants and their immediate families. They don’t just take jobs, they create jobs.

Second, require all new employees to have a tamper-proof national identity card, and phase in the requirement for all employees to possess such a card within ten years.

Third, issue the identity cards to any and all who can show proof of identity, and assign each a social security account number.

Fourth, allow illegal aliens to apply for residence if they can prove past employment and residency, plus pay a fine for entering illegally. Allow them to apply for citizenship when they can meet language, knowledge, and residence requirements.

Fifth, don’t approve immigration of family members other than the spouse and dependent children.

What I propose is unabashedly amnesty for illegal immigrants in terms of permitting them legal resident status.

It is also a wide-open invitation to immigration by highly educated or highly skilled people and their immediate families world wide, as long as they can pass a thorough background security check.

This in no way is deserting or compromising my conservative principles. It honors my ideals of free markets, which I think includes the market for educated and skilled employees, and recognizes that many unskilled and uneducated illegal immigrants have become a vital part of the economic fabric of our country.

I don’t have to agree with what they’ve done to recognize it as a fait accompli, and to encourage us to make the best of what we have.

Let’s not choke on our lemons, and make sour faces, let's make some lemonade.

Flash! Left Doesn't Understand Property Rights

I butted into a long-running argument twixt liberals and conservatives about illegal aliens (undocumented immigrants, using liberal jargon) by posting the article I wrote concerning illegals trespassing over border ranches (Property Rights? We Don't Need No Stinking Property Rights). It didn’t take long to get a liberal’s response.

This is “Medawhite’s” response:

Let’s get one thing straight; one who owns property has proprietary rights. They have the right of ownership of the land and all the things upon the land; they do not have the right to divert people that are journeying across their land to get from point A to point B from doing so: The California law that makes crossing private property to get to a body of water being the most effective example. What makes a land owner believe that they are God of their universe? What if every property owner between here and Los Angles did not allow crossing their private property to get to the ocean? We would be as the Palestinians that live four hundred yard from the ocean and never see it but can only hear it.

Property owners that play God about their ownership of land allowing only certain people to cross are not even human, and should be addressed as such.

As I expected, Liberals labor under many misconceptions, and property law is probably one among many areas of abysmal ignorance.

My reply to Medawhite:

In California you do not have a right to cross another's private property to get to a body of water.

For example, the Sea Ranch development just south of Gualala has designated parking areas adjacent to Highway 1, and marked trails to get to the ocean at certain points. Many other land owners along the coast own the beach to the average high tide mark, and do not allow access to the beach across their property.

The Stornetta Ranch on the Garcia River north of Point Arena just sold 1600 acres to be administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Until they sold the land, miles of ocean front could not be accessed by the public.

I don't know where you come up with your concept that the public can "journey" across private property. Not in California.

The land owner is not God of a Universe. They just own property rights which allow them to deny the use of their property to others. If you want to cross their land to get to the water, they may sell you an easement.

Many of the subdivisions in the Gualala area have sold deeded beach access as part of the land sales package. One half-acre lot which cannot be built upon because wells drilled on it cannot produce water was sold for $65,000 just for the value of the beach access.

As with all things, the value of land includes the passage or restriction of passage over it, regardless of your assessment of the humanity of its owners. They paid for it, and if a lot of people want to cross it, they can pay tolls to its owner if they wish.

Medawhite posted a brief reply:

I will assume all that all you say is true but would ask you how is it that fishermen and river enthusiast cannot be barred from the water while ocean people can?

I have to say one thing about Medawhite. He/she just lobs them right into the strike zone. I too made a brief reply:

None can be barred from the water - ocean or river - if they obey the relevant laws for such use. But you can be barred from crossing private property to get to the ocean or the river. While on the river, there are many places along the river where you cannot go ashore because you would be trespassing on private property.

Fishermen and river enthusiasts put their boats, etc. at publicly or privately owned docks, boat ramps, etc. (they usually pay a fee for use), and take them out where they launched them or at another facility for that purpose.

Medawhite made a less than chastened reply. He/she was wrong on the law, but the law is unfair.

Thank you for the lesson. I have been edified and will remember that the rights of humanity have been subjugated to the rights of property ownership. So it is in the beginning, so it is today. You have made my case.

This was the chance I was looking for to start slashing communism and socialism, using the platform that individual property rights are much more democratic than state controlled ones.

It's nothing new. At one time, kings and lords, pharaohs and Caesars, emperors and khans, sheiks and caliphs, and all the other forms of potentates owned everything - or took what they wanted.

Then came Secretaries of Communist Parties, and socialist governments, and in those nations the state owned all.

Now we are moving to a stage in the advancement of civilization where property ownership is more democratic.

The counter movement to that is led by people, probably yourself, who wish the state would take back some or all the property rights from selfish private citizens and share them with the deserving multitudes.

When you write:

...the rights of humanity have been subjugated to the rights of property ownership.

bear in mind that humanity includes those property owners. In the United States, you can purchase property and enjoy the rights of its ownership. Or you can create property - a song, computer software, a book, picture, design, & etc. - and receive value from its use. In many parts of the world, only the elite or rulers can have that, and all you create is theirs.

I know, I can almost hear you saying it; of course what is created belongs to the people. The man couldn't write the software without the state education. And songs, books, pictures are just entertainment - why should only one person make money from something that should be given to everyone to enjoy?

The answer is simple and obvious. Man creates to satisfy himself. He wants to decide if it is to be given away to the masses, and not let the decision be made by the masses, or by the rulers of the masses.

In fact, absent that control and choice, man will not create much of anything of value. Human nature trumps idealistic utopianism every time.

At this point another fellow posted about how arch liberal Barbra Streisand tried to prevent the California Coastal Records Project from publishing aerial photos of her mansion taken from a helicopter flying offshore. According to Babs, she not only does not allow access across her property, she doesn’t even allow it to be photographed from a helicopter flying over public land. She lost her lawsuit.

Click on this link (Coastal Record) , and then click on “About the Streisand Lawsuit” about halfway down the left column.

Because of Bab’s lawsuit, huge numbers of viewers have gazed upon the photo of her mansion that would never have it she had kept her commodious mouth shut.

I wonder if her carbon footprint is a big as Al Gore’s mansion. I’ll bet she is as extravagant a user of energy as Hypocrite Al.

It didn’t take long for a good utopian socialist like Medawhite to get to the crux of the insurmountable problem facing socialists and communists: human nature.

People don’t want to live and behave as socialists and communists theorize they should. This aspect of human nature doesn’t go down well with Medawhite.

So you are saying that utopianism be damned. I suppose this is the difference between you and me. I understand your point of view but simply disagree with the entire precept that there should be class differences. I am not naïve I know that your idea of how it should be will never cease to exist do to the condition of man in the flesh of being greedy and self emulated in narcissism of self worth.

It has been interesting for me to delve into the mind of a liberal concerning property rights. I just assumed that property rights are a defining element of personal rights and freedom, and was surprised to find such deep ignorance coupled with animosity towards individual ownership of property.

I mercifully concluded this incredibly one-sided exchange:

The ownership of property rights, and the exercise of such rights by the owner, has nothing to do with class. An impoverished person can receive property rights to an expensive estate through such means as a bequest, and exercise those rights the same as the person who paid a fortune to acquire them. The late Anna Nichole Smith comes to mind.

Ted Kennedy would just be another miserable alcoholic without the power of inherited property rights. The fact he has no class does not prevent him from the free exercise of property rights.

Or from trying to use the government to take mine and give them to his supporters.

It used to be said democracy would only last until the politicians found they could bribe the people with their own money. Actually, this should be amended to state that it will last only to the point when politicians find they can bribe the people with other people's money.

That's the real essence of class differences. The have-not class doesn't want everyone to be just as miserable as themselves. They just want politicians to give them everything that others worked hard to earn and save.

The liberal politician says, "You vote for me, and I'll see what I can take from them and give to you."

THE POWER TO TAX IS THE POWER TO DESTROY.

Medawhite seemed to have given up on the property rights thread, because his/her next post was completely off the wall:

Mr. Major Mike, may I remind you for a moment that the US is spending more money on world domination and oil at any cost than it is in Public Welfare. More money is also being given to corporations in tax breaks to the point that it is called Corporate Welfare for the corporations that were formed for the specific purpose of providing weapons of war and mass destruction to the US and Israeli Governments along with anyone else that may need a weapon or two; also the subsidies that are given to the drug companies in the form of no bid drug prices; the subsidies given to the weapons manufacturers in the form of foreign aid to Israel and the dictators in Darfore that receive tax dollars from America and its corporate arm the World Bank. How about the subsidies given to Halliburton and the others that receive no bid contracts, no bid meaning that there is no cap on the profits, being what is called a time and material contract: The more you spend the higher your profits.

What about tax dollars being spent on food subsidies to the corporate corn and wheat industries to drive down the world prices and starve the locals which cause them to migrate to America?
The big laugh that the Archer Daniels Midland types have on the American public and those that may sympathize with this paradigm is that the produce can be grown and subsidized even though it has never seen American soil having been grown in India or anywhere else on the planet. Corporations are throwing bales of American taxpayer money around like footballs literally in hundred dollar bill bales of ten thousand and you are worried about some welfare queen scenario, or some migrant that might get health care illegally?

With Medawhite throwing around the stock attacks on United States world domination and lust for oil, buzz words like Corporate Welfare, Haliburton, Archer Daniels Midland, and put downs of Israel, I realized I had pushed Medawhite to the wall, causing the unleashing of a torrent of leftist clichés.

Against such a scattergun (scatterbrain) fusillade of liberal allusions towards conservative issues, I chose to answer by firing volleys in force about reductions in military spending as a percent of gross domestic product, lower food prices through greater agricultural efficiency, and how spending on entitlement programs is dwarfing all other government activities and will soon sink our economy.

Against Medawhite’s torrent of opinions and allusions, I unleashed a torrent of facts. Please click on this link, it's much to long to copy/paste. Thanks.

I doubt it will do any good. Facts to leftists like Medawhite are of interest only to the extent they consider them malleable and capable of being shaped to fit the liberal need of the moment.

A fact means nothing, its interpretation is what counts.

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Give Health Care Away, And They Will Take It

A San Francisco Chronicle editorial supporting Governor Schwarzennegger’s proposal for universal California health insurance noted that 52% of Californians are for universal coverage, yet 52% oppose it for illegal aliens. The Chronicle wonders how Californians can be for universal coverage, but not for it to be truly universal. The Chronicle, or course, believes that illegal aliens should be given health care, and contends that wouldn’t attract more illegal aliens to California.

I, of course, believe that when you give away something of value, you attract people who would like to have it. They may be illegal aliens that would have gone to some other state, but find the free health coverage too attractive to pass up. They might be legal residents or citizens of other states, who find free health care too attractive to pass up and come to California for it. Free health care in California for anyone who comes to California and wants it certainly won’t discourage anyone from coming to California.

Send us your poor, your sick, your uneducated, your unskilled, your seekers after freebies, your cash basis workers who pay no taxes, your criminals, your gang-bangers...

The Chronicle doesn’t worry about the issues that bother Californians and make them oppose free health care for illegal aliens. According to the Chronicle editorial:

For Schwarzenegger to sell Californians on his plan, he will have to confront these fears -- firmly but empathetically. This includes fears about how universal insurance could have a so-called "magnet effect." Illegal immigrants come here to work, not to milk our social programs. Regarding cost, a recent Rand Institute study showed that illegal immigrants use fewer health services than their American-born counterparts -- and little public money.

Actually, the Chronicle is either lying or in error in its last remark that the Rand study found that illegal immigrants use “little public money.” Perhaps the Chronicle would say it was clear that they only meant illegals used little public money for health services, but their comment is not clearly qualified that it is just about health services. It actually should read that “illegal aliens use relatively little public money for health care.”

The word “relatively” has significance, since illegal aliens do consume at least a billion dollars ($11 in taxes per household) in government funded health services each year, per the Rand study, compared to $88 billion for legal non-elderly adults in 2000. Since this is an area where you would expect significant underreporting because of the difficulty in identifying expenditures for illegal aliens, it is a logical assumption that the cost for illegal alien health services is actually much higher. Also, the cost is not distributed evenly across the country, but is concentrated on the taxpayers of certain states, like California, and of certain cities, like Los Angeles.

As this news series in 2005 found:

Sixty percent of (Los Angeles) county's uninsured patients are not U.S. citizens. More than half are here illegally. About 2 million undocumented aliens in Los Angeles County alone are crowding emergency rooms because they can't afford to see a doctor.

The Rand study dilutes the impact of illegal aliens on health services by spreading the numbers and cost over the entire country, and the Chronicle aids their effort by acting as if this national study describes the California scene.

However, in a Los Angeles TV special series: “(In 2004), Los Angeles County spent $340 million to treat the uninsured; that's roughly $1,000 for every taxpayer.”

Based on the estimates that half of the uninsured patients are illegals, that’s a yearly cost of roughly $500 for every Los Angeles taxpayer for illegal alien health care, a lot more than $11 per household.

Of course, it is not true that illegal aliens use little public money, and even the Rand study pointed out that: "Costs will be much higher for educating the children of undocumented immigrants, so that's where debate should center, not on these relatively small health care costs."

The Chronicle doesn't make any mention, or even hint, that there might be a cost in an illegal alien crime wave.

Or that the illegal alien's "cash economy" is destructive of employment and businesses of citizens and legal immigrants.

Drawing from the information above, twenty percent of the population of Los Angeles County are illegal aliens. Further, “By 2002, more than 70 percent of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District were Hispanic, predominantly Mexican, with the proportion increasing steadily.”

For California in 2004, roughly $7.7 billion was spent to educate the children of illegal aliens, or 13% of the statewide school budget. Naturally, the costs were high in areas of illegal alien concentration such as Los Angeles.

Defenders of illegal aliens assert that the cost of educating illegal alien students is offset by the taxes paid by their parents, but study after study shows that immigrants cost taxpayers much more in public services used than they pay into the system via taxes. This is particularly true of illegal immigrants, who are disproportionately low-skilled and thus low-earning and are much more likely to be working in the underground economy or providing contractual services and not withholding taxes.

The bottom line, don’t take editorials in Liberal mouthpieces like the San Francisco Chronicle at face value. The Chronicle, like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, & Etc, is pedaling a political agenda and has no ethical or professional reservations about how they selectively choose and distort information to make their point.

Yeah, I'm shocked too.

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Property Rights? We Don't Need No Stinking Property Rights

Property rights? We don' need no steenkeen property rights!

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a New York Times article by Randal C. Archibold, November 24, 2006, Illegal immigrants fight border monitor in court. The article begins:

For years, Roger Barnett has holstered a pistol to his hip, tucked an assault rifle in his truck, and set out over the scrub brush on his thousands of acres of ranchland near the border in southeastern Arizona to hunt (illegal immigrants).

(Roger Barnett), after boasting of having captured 12,000 illegal crossers on land he owns or leases from the state and emerging as one of the earliest and most prominent of the self-appointed border watchers, Barnett finds himself the prey.

The New York Times article, by using the phrase “self-appointed border watcher” to describe a rancher protecting his property, is clearly slanted towards the American rancher being the bad guy, and the thousands of self-appointed illegal crossers over his land the victims.

But wait a minute, before you Liberals throw the illegals the rope to string Barnett up. The first thing, do property rights mean anything? I always thought that if you were on someone else’s property, you were either there with permission or you were trespassing. Does being an illegal immigrant give you a “Trespass Free” card?

I know up here in Northern California, our Limousine Liberals are just like the rest of us when it comes to property rights. They are all “self-appointed property-line watchers.” If you cross onto their property, they snarl at you like a junk-yard dog.

Not long ago Alice innocently rode her bike down a loop of Old Highway 1, and just at the end where it rejoins Highway 1, it crosses through a driveway/parking lot of the former (burned down) Old Milano Hotel where my Uncle Walter and family lived when we originally came to the area in 1949. A woman rushed out and rudely stopped Alice and ordered her to go back the way she came, rather than letting her cross the last hundred feet to Highway 1 through what looked like a public access road to the hotel parking lot.

For decades abalone pickers could not go to some of the most inviting areas because they bordered a large cattle ranch. American citizenship did not prevent the ranchers from chasing away anyone found on their property without permission. One of the best fishing and abalone diving areas near the ranch is still off limits, because it borders the old Loran Station now owned by Mendocino College.

Of course, property owners rightfully guard against trespassers on their land, who in this area are primarily tourists seeking access to the ocean across land for which the owner paid a lot of money to secure both the ocean frontage and privacy. That still doesn’t stop the public from considering that they have all the rights of the owner of the property, except they don’t have to pay any of his exorbitant property taxes.

Meanwhile, on the Arizona-Mexico border, a rancher who legally owns and leases thousands of acres to raise cattle is subject to legal jeopardy and Liberal ridicule because he wants to prevent illegal immigrants from trespassing on his land. Quick, one of you Liberal lawyers. Tell this dumb rancher how he will lose everything he owns if one of the illegal alien trespassers is killed or badly injured because of an unsafe condition on his ranch. The fact the trespasser had no right to be in the country, let alone on his ranch, isn’t going to save the rancher from liability, is that not so?

Who reimburses the rancher for loss or damage to his equipment or livestock caused by the trespassers? Or pays claims for death or injury to the trespassers? If you say insurance, are you sure? And who pays his premium and deductible? What insurance company knowingly would insure property, livestock, and equipment that is exposed to the illegal passage of tens of thousands of immigration law breakers?

The New York Times reported that Mr. Barnett was sued for “(T)hreatening two Mexican American hunters and three children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racist epithets, (and that the law suit) ended Wednesday with a jury awarding the hunters $98,750 in damages.”

Apparently, you now get in trouble if you are armed and confront armed trespassers on your own property. Why would Mr. Barnett go about armed on his property? Have any of you been reading about confrontations between law enforcement and illegal drug producing illegal “immigrants” in California?

Of course, being armed on your own property here in Northern California might not do you much good. The meth lab workers and marijuana growers are usually more heavily armed than the police. Since they are illegal in all ways, they bring their firearms with them when they come across the border, and probably more than a few come through Mr. Barnett’s property.

By the way, law-abiding hunters, which include all the members of the National Rifle Association, always get permission to hunt on the property of others, and follow all the owners’ rules, such as closing gates behind them. It is very hard to find illegal aliens and drug workers with the same ethical standards. Therefore, if you find unauthorized armed individuals on your property, you can bet they have broken and are breaking a high stack of laws.

Do they have hunting licenses? Are their firearms registered? Are they in the country legally? Do you know where they live? They know where you live. Will they take it calmly and philosophically when you tell them you’re going to report them to the police if they don’t get off your property? When the police come poking around, will they know who tipped off the police? When they lose millions of dollars worth of marijuana plants or methamphetamine, will they be PO’d?

Is it time for you to move far away?

Is that the message we’re sending to Mr. Barnett and the other ranchers and farmers in the path of the illegal alien “immigrant” invasion?

“You ranchers may think it’s bad now, but do anything to try and stop the illegals, and an army of their free lawyers will descend on you. You’ll have to pay for your own lawyers, so even if you win, you lose.”

Now that Democrats are in charge, think it’ll get any better?

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Solving The Illegal Aliens' Babies Problem

Mexican ambulance bound for an American hospital maternity ward

An editorial in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (California), expressed concern that a child born in America of illegal aliens (the Press Democrat calls them “immigrants”) should not have to show citizenship papers to receive medical treatment under Medicaid. Their editorial position is that the baby is an American citizen and should immediately be treated as such, regardless of the status of the parents.

In the scenario established by the editorial, the baby was born in the hospital that would be called upon to provide subsequent treatment. The hospital knows the baby was born in America, therefore it’s obvious the baby is an American, so why all the red tape?

The hospital will still treat the baby. It’s just that the hospital won't be reimbursed unless the baby's parent files a Medicaid application, with citizenship papers.

At this point I ask, “What’s the problem?”

The baby didn’t walk into the hospital by itself, so grab a parent and have them fill out the forms.

Or as a reader suggested, have them pay for the treatment, and then be reimbursed when Medicaid pays the hospital.

My suggestion gets to the basis of the problem. As long as American citizenship is the prize for illegal aliens who can find some way to have their baby on American soil, we will have a lot of pregnant illegal aliens rushing to deliver their babies in American hospitals.

One estimate is that illegal aliens have 300,000 babies in America annually. Personally, I think the study mixed up the statistics, and that was the total for California alone.

We can change the law so that a baby born in America is a citizen of the country of its parents’ citizenship, and is an American only if born of American parents.

There is ample precedent for this position. As an example, and as I know from direct experience gained from over 21 years in the Air Force, many babies were and are born overseas of American parents, and every one of those babies is an American citizen. My oldest granddaughter, Leaha, born in the Landstuhl Army Hospital in Germany, is one of them.

Whenever medically necessary, babies will still be born in American hospitals, still be treated in American hospitals, but they won’t be American citizens if their parents aren’t.

One positive of this change is that there probably would be a reduction in the number of babies born in American hospitals.

Another positive is that many pregnant women will not have to make the long, dangerous journey to cross the border to have their child. Without the reward of American citizenship for their babies as the prize for breaking our immigration laws, they might as well deliver their babies in the comfort and safety of their own country.

Finally, as I noted months ago in my post, "Making The Army Of Reconquista," Mexicans intend to take back California by turning on the full firepower of their females' fallopian tubes, doing just what the Muslims are doing in their conquest of Europe, as reported by Mark Steyn.

It puzzles me that, with our culture at stake, we and the Europeans are so eager to help them win.

Punishing The Law-Abiding

California sued six of the world's largest automakers over global warming, charging that greenhouse gases from their vehicles have caused billions of dollars in damages. The lawsuit is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles' emissions, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said.

How could such a stupid person pass a law exam? These vehicles were manufactured and sold in accordance with all state and federal regulations. California fills its tax coffers every day with the ill-gotten gain from their sale and operation. Can anyone in good conscience say it is OK to legally permit something, and then sue for doing it?

We cannot be certain we have man-made global warming, and if we do, the extent of its monetary damages or its benefits. We may not know in a hundred years.

Missing from the lawsuit are the owners and operators of the vehicles. It is one thing to build a vehicle, it is another to operate it. Does “build it and they will drive it” make the builder solely responsible? Didn’t the California consumers dictate the number and type of vehicles manufactured by what could or could not be sold profitably to them?

So let’s put it all together. Lockyer sues manufacturers for engaging in lawful behavior, saying they are causing unknown damages via an unproven process. In a state whose lawmakers validate illegal activities (undocumented immigration), it isn’t surprising they want to penalize legal ones.

Dumb, and dumber.

Mexicans Need To Get Mad At Mexico For A Change

Concerning the Mexican elections, I wrote a comment to another blog, Big Lizards, that I thought it would be better if the socialist, Obrador, won instead of Calderón. My reasons were simple and cynical. I thought Obrador would quickly make an even bigger mess of the Mexican economy, and that Mexicans would finally be fed up and fix things.

Obviously, mine is not a popular position, but it should be. "No pain, no gain." America is a nation of tinkers. We like to work on a problem, make a little change here, an adjustment there, take a little nip, put in a little tuck, cobble it together, and muddle through. That’s why we have abominations like paying non-farmers to not farm. Why not non-workers to not work?

Oops, that's right, we're already doing that.

Eventually the best approach to a problem is to tear down the old and build anew. Add Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service to the long list of things that have been and continue to be tinkered, when they really need a mercy killing and rebirth.

Mexico is like a druggie, an alcoholic. No one can cure the druggie or alcoholic but themselves. And to cure themselves, they have to want the cure, which usually means they have to hit rock bottom first before they want to go into recovery. That’s not going to happen as long as the Mexican government does a half-assed job of running the country, and the United States gives Mexicans a way to escape their misery. As it now stands, the government of Mexico owes its continued existence to illegal immigration and the remittances illegal immigrants send back to Mexico.

Almost twenty percent of Mexicans are in the United States, and their remittances in total roughly equal the value of Mexico’s largest export, oil. With the output of Mexican oil fields declining steadily, and the economy of the United States booming, where does that leave the Mexicans? In misery? Or in America?

Why can’t a nation with abundant natural resources, salubrious climate, energetic and hardworking citizens, located next to the richest nation of all time, be prosperous? As Dick E. noted in a comment on Big Lizards, the country has been run “in a manner of speaking” by a stable political party for almost a century. When you compare the progress the United States and Mexico have made in that one hundred years, it is obvious Mexico has made no significant progress. Compare Mexico to South Korea. Half a century ago South Korea was war torn and impoverished. In 2005, South Korea’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was $20,400, Mexico’s was $10,000. Even Botswana was doing better ($10,500).

Mexico is missing two key ingredients for progress – ending corruption and improving education. And to improve education, Mexico has to end corruption. Let’s try another comparison. Less than 200 years ago Ireland was an impoverished nation of starving people, with civil wars and insurrections. Ireland and Mexico achieved political stability at about the same time, and now Ireland’s educated population produces a per capita GDP of $41,000, seventh highest in the world and almost up with the United States ($41,800).

The students of both South Korea and Ireland achieve high rankings in math, reading, and science, and Mexico is ranked near the bottom in all three categories. Other nations that suffered the devastation of war – Germany, France, Japan, Poland, even Russia – are all ranked higher on both education and economic performance than Mexico. Does it take a war or revolution for Mexico to start getting its act together?

UPDATE: Be careful what you wish for, because some times wishes come true.

"Democratic" López Obrador Threatens Revolution If He Loses, as posted at Big Lizards

Even Al Gore and John Kerry weren't quite this big a sore loser!

UPDATED UPDATE: Yes they are, at least Robert "I'm not the Kennedy in rehab - yet" Kennedy, Jr. is!

Almost two years later, Robert Kennedy, Jr. is still fighting the 2004 presidential election results in Ohio. In Rolling Stone magazine, of all places. Interestingly, many of his conclusions were refuted by the Democratic Party in a study they performed following the election, after which they concluded that President Bush had indeed won Ohio. His conclusions were also refuted in the following Salon.com article.

Was the 2004 election stolen? No. By Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com, June 3, 2006
"In Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that new evidence proves that Bush stole the election. But the evidence he cites isn't new and his argument is filled with distortions and blatant omissions."

Legal Immigration Problems

When trying to understand the illegal immigration problem, it probably helps to a certain degree to understand the legal immigration problem. The same feckless governments that find it is impossible to stop, reduce, or control in even the mildest form the illegal immigration problem, have designed a system for legal immigration that is complicated, convoluted, counter-productive, and crazy. And crass, cruddy, creepy; in other words, the sort of system that defies rational analysis.

Let’s look at it a moment. Those who apply to enter the United States legally face many years of expenses and frustration. They probably would be better off if they just came here on a tourist or student visa and got lost, or flew to Mexico or Canada and walked in. The first option worked for the 9/11 hijackers.

Instead, the legal applicants face fees. Then more fees. Then lost paperwork. And more fees. And more lost paperwork. And misunderstandings by the processors of their application which results in – you guessed it – more fees, more paperwork, more lost paperwork, and more misunderstandings.

Please read this San Francisco Chronicle article for all the fumbling, frustrating situations that legal immigration applicants face. After you read the examples, think of two things.

First, you want to reward the illegal immigrants for breaking the law, and at the same time make it even more difficult for the highly educated, highly skilled legal applicants to immigrate.

Second, you want the same government that designed the legal immigration system to take control of health care and continue to run Social Security.

That’s scary.

Newt Gingrich For President (Maybe)

Newt Gingrich is clearly running for President in 2008, and I am sorely conflicted. Alice and I were among the most fervent supporters of him and his powerful creation, “The Contract With America,” which swept Republicans to congressional power in 1994 for the first time in our adult lives.

We attended a Republican fundraiser in Walnut Creek featuring Newt in 1996, and Alice and I charged in amongst a crowd of protesters – paid union sign carriers, Berkeley “activists” (also paid), and other Democrat special interest groups – and we were so effective, just the two of us, that all the major newspapers the next day featured pictures of us, and none of the protesters. Can you imagine how bad that made the protesters feel? The Left owns protests. When you don’t have anything better to do with your time, like go to work, you can always join a protest. Yet there they were in Walnut Creek, spending their time carrying signs, yelling, looking for cameras to get in front of, and two Republicans in business suits get the front page pictures!



One Democrat couldn’t contain himself. The following morning, Alice answered our phone. “I saw your picture in the Oakland Tribune this morning. You’re awful people! (Sound of phone being slammed down).” That was the first hint we had that we had become part of the previous day’s Newt Gingrich news coverage. Soon we got several calls from friends, who saw our pictures in the Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, and the Contra Costa Times.

Not long after this I started having doubts about Newt. First there were his messy personal problems. The same journalists that gave passes on personal issues to Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, and other prominent Democrats could be trusted to be all over any personal problem of a Republican leader. Have you noticed how a (former) Klu Klux Klan member like Robert Byrd can be the worshiped leader of the Democrats, can be the longest serving Senator ever, and yet an innocuous flattering remark to a retiring colleague can cost a Republican his leadership position. Isn’t that right, Senator Lott?

And then Newt started to exhibit an uncanny ability to lead Republicans in rounds of self-inflicted shots in the foot and other more sensitive body parts, of “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” He started to exhibit arrogance in the conduct of congressional activities that I thought was reserved for Democrats only. He single handedly resurrected Bill Clinton’s pathetic presidency. Bill Clinton went from pleading publicly that his presidency was still relevant, when it wasn’t, to appearing as the champion that saved beleaguered citizens from Republican indifference. When he said, “I feel your pain,” he was probably laughing inwardly at the pain Republicans were inflicting on themselves. Bill Clinton still presided over a “do-nothing” presidency, but was able to step between the warring parties (Dick Morris’ “triangulation”) and claim Republican victories like Welfare Reform as his own.

So Newt is running for President in 2008, and I don’t know what to make of it. The guy is smart, sometimes brilliant, articulate in a way few modern-day politicians are, and able to look for answers “outside of the box.” I agree with too much of too many of his positions to dismiss him out-of-hand, like the American electorate will. Therefore I welcome his Quixotic presidential quest, because I hope his good ideas will be stolen by one or more of his rivals, propel them to victory, and end up reshaping the focus and nature of our political debate for the many decades to come. Even if he never gets the job, I think Newt is one of the few, maybe the only, American leader who can take us away from special interest politics and give us a coherent vision of a rational system of national governance.

I have taken the liberty of copying his latest newsletter and including it below. Read it, weep for what might have been, hope for what might become.

Winning the Future, by Newt Gingrich
A Twenty-First Century Contract With America
June 19, 2006
Volume 1, No. 9

The First War of Globalization

Watching Congress debate the Iraq War last week reminded me of how many politicians in Washington still don't get it. Some completely miss the lessons of history that teach us how important victory in Iraq is for the United States. Fortunately, the House passed a resolution to "complete the mission" in Iraq and rejected a date certain for withdrawal of our troops. But before House Republicans prevailed on this resolution, we had to sit through a debate in which some members -- amazingly -- suggested that the death of the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by U.S. air strikes means it is a good time to withdraw our troops, completely ignoring the fact that coalition troops, along with the Iraqis, have conducted nearly 500 more raids since killing Zarqawi.

It is difficult for me to convey to you how wrong I believe this cut-and-run attitude is.

The killing of Zarqawi, as I discussed last week, was a substantial win -- a win that should be built upon with greater resolve to finish the job in Iraq. It should not be used as a justification to withdraw before the job is done.

The ‘Grey World’ of Terrorism

More importantly, our efforts in Iraq have to be understood in a much bigger -- a global -- context. We are engaged in a global, long war with the irreconcilable wing of Islam. In many ways, this is the first war of globalization. Just as globalization lets us send messages all over the world instantaneously via e-mail, use our phones to call people all over the world, transfer cash in and out of stock markets all over the world and travel easily and globally, it also has a downside.

Former CIA Director George Tenet describes this downside of globalization as the "Grey World." It's the world of terrorists who can organize much more effectively and globally, trafficking in human beings for the sex trade and trafficking in drugs, international crime, illegal arms deals and illegal international transportation that is made possible by technological advances. This Grey World is the dark side of the stunning increases in standards of living, communications and transportation that have marked the modern world.

That's why Zarqawi in Baghdad has a relationship with terrorists arrested recently in Britain and Canada. That's why Zarqawi in Baghdad relates directly to what happened in Mogadishu, Somalia, where a group of Islamic extremists took control, creating the potential that Somalia could become a new Afghanistan-like center of opposition to the civilized world. And that's why Zarqawi in Baghdad relates to the developments in Aceh in Sumatra, where a local group made a deal with the central government allowing them to impose sharia, the extremist, medieval Islamic law, on all citizens, including non-Muslims. By acquiescing to the imposition of Islamic law, a new center of militant behavior is being created right in the middle of Indonesia.


President Bush Should Call a Long War Council

Each of these developments is tied together by the fact that in this globalized long war, terrorists reinforce each other's worldview on websites, they study each other, they communicate with each other by e-mail and mobile phones, and they very often travel to many different countries. That's why we have to recognize that while it was right for President Bush to convene a war council on Iraq last week, my hope is that he will convene a council to plan for the long war. And in the months and years ahead, we need to have an open, honest dialogue around the world with those who are willing to defend our civilization. We need to discuss how we're going to make sure that the forces of democracy, the forces of the rule of law and the forces of freedom defeat the forces of terror and tyranny who seek to threaten us in every country in the world. Your friend,

Newt Gingrich


P.S. - The rush to judgment over allegations of military misconduct in Iraq got me thinking about its effect on our fighting men and women. So I asked a former Marine who served two tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom how all this talk is effecting morale. His remarkable answer follows:

It should be noted that the Marines on patrol in Iraq and Afghanistan are the true embodiment of what America and Democracy are about. They are the 19-year-old young men and women that are making a sacrifice. They are not enjoying rush week at a university or going to the beach for the summer, but rather offering their lives in the defense of each other, their families and their homes. These 19-year-olds are the true tip of America's spear and bear more responsibility each day than most Americans do in lifetimes.

It seems that in this day and age there is more support and misdirected justice for prison inmates than these dedicated young Marines. For any American -- most especially the media -- to condemn or judge them is absurd. They will be investigated and judged by fellow warriors who understand the circumstances and the enemy involved. Rest assured, no one holds their people more accountable than the military, most especially the Marine Corps. "Keep our Honor Clean" isn't just a catch phrase.


Ask Newt

Question: How about this idea for "guest workers." Do you think it would work?

Any "guest-worker" immigration legislation must stipulate that a percentage of their income (10-25%) is escrowed by their employer into a U.S. bank money-market account in the state where the employment occurs. They get the escrowed money when they return to their home country on time and have not violated any U.S. laws. Funds not qualifying, because of violations, are to be given to the state where the money was earned to defray immigration costs.


Richard H.
Summerfield, Fla.

Newt’s Answer: Thanks for the question, Richard.

I think this idea, and similar ideas like it that have been discussed, could be a very effective part of a work-visa program. Before I get to why I think so, I would like to make the point that in addition to holding some portion of each paycheck in an escrow account, I would like to see all payments to work-visa holders made by electronic direct deposit for the same reason that it adds another tool for enforcing compliance. With electronic payments we would have a way to easily know where in the country the worker is employed and who is paying, and if there is a change in the worker's legal status, the account could be frozen instantly.

Now to your question and the two reasons why I like the escrow idea.

First, it creates an incentive for work-visa holders to return home before their visa expires. Not complying with the law or returning home after the work-visa expiration date would put their escrow money in jeopardy.

Second, it could help to level the root inequality in opportunity and the pervasive poverty that is driving the wave of foreigners, particularly from countries to our South, to the United States in the first place. Upon their return home from working in the United States, the workers would be able to use the money they have saved in their escrow accounts to start a new small business, perhaps even with another or several other former work-visa holders. Escrow accounts would not only give workers the incentive to go home in order to withdraw the money, it would create the motivation to dream about the day when they can open their own business back home, be their own boss and create and accumulate wealth for their families, and -- because small businesses create jobs -- for other families in their communities as well.

Helping hardworking people to start small businesses in their home countries will do far more to improve the long-term health of the economies of Mexico and other Central and South American countries than any amount of U.S. foreign aid that may be offered, which is often poorly spent and is almost never used to tackle the root causes of poverty.