Can Tea Party Patriots Rescue Our Electoral System?

 First Principles, Government, Legislation, Rule of Law
Sep 042010
 

If not us, who? If not now, when?

Now It's Up to Us

ELECTION MADNESS

Never mind the voting machines many states never fixed after the year 2,000 fiasco; or the Motor Voter fraud, or the absentee ballot fraud, or the gerrymandering, or all the ineligible voters left on state voter registration lists, or the shafting of military voters, or the Acorn violations, or the lack of voter fraud prosecutions, or the New Black Panthers lack of prosecution for voter intimidation, or the post-election recount scams.  Author John Fund, and others, have written extensively about these very serious erosions of our election system.  And there’s always the attempt to rid us of the Electoral College established by the Constitution.  No.  What I’m talking about right now is Federal.

In addition to the items above which can often be addressed at the state level, we need to free ourselves of the madness surrounding our presidential elections.  Way too much time; way too much money; primaries that make no sense, and a media influence that borders on the criminal.  In addition, we’ve allowed congressional districts to be created that are drawn by race and party, such that there is guaranteed incumbency, and no input from broader constituencies that live in the same area.

CONGRESS TRAPPED

No point in criticizing Congress at this point; they’re a bit like some medieval armies which, after any given war was over, wandered about the countryside, looting and pillaging towns at random, even those of their own countries.  Or at least that’s the perception, which explains the abysmal congressional public-approval ratings (currently at 12%).  I have bigger fish to fry.  Since 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators have been in some form of disapproval for years, regardless of party affiliation, and despite the heroic efforts of some of their members to behave honorably, it’s past time to wonder if we couldn’t devise a different set of incentives.

What’t the point?  Isn’t that just rearranging the furniture?  If they’re stupid, incompetent or corrupt, you might say, no system will change it.  Not at all.  This seems to be a dilemma that can be created, over time, in one form or another, in nearly any human  organization.   Ambition,competition, finessing the rules to create advantage, feathering nests, pandering to contributors, lying to the benighted, the ill-informed, the groupies.

TEA PARTY TRIGGER

For whatever the Tea Party has become, or is evolving into, only those tied to a set of outworn prejudices can deny that the movement started out of the spontaneous outrage of ordinary citizens who felt that the Federal government had violated the social compact.  Everyone, myself included, was inured to deceit and incompetence; buffoonery and bluster, unwarranted spending and manipulative posturing.  Those became routine, and we went about our lives as if it would somehow never get worse.  Then…it did.  A line was crossed.

Spending that was already insanely out of hand got ignored for fresh spending.  The reason provided was shocking – a complete reordering of society.  A new economy that would replace the old, fourteen-trillion dollar economy with one that would be devised by a government convinced that America was an unjust society.  Henceforth, honest employment would consist of making “green” cars, building fields of huge wind turbines, covering acres of land with solar panels and putting food in our gas tanks.  Massive entitlement programs were to be created, oil and coal eliminated, our financial system captured.

Those who pay nearly all of America’s taxes would have their burden increased so that the money could be distributed to non-taxpayers, in the form of “refunds,’ as promised by Senator Obama – and ignored by the electorate – during his presidential campaign.  The discussion regarding how these changes would impact the lives of individuals from all walks of life was confined to vague “hope and change,” references, as well as even vaguer references by the candidate to “difficult times ahead.”  Maybe because explicitly stating that our society had supposedly failed its people and it was time for the government to fix that by creating a new society — would not have been as winning a campaign speech.

It didn’t really matter whether you believed our new President and his entourage to be Socialists, Statists, Fascists, Radicals or Revolutionaries; it was outrageous with any label.  Way too much spending; way too much federal government.  Instant Tea.  The fossils who run the Republican Party clearly didn’t get it, and their opponents reflexively lashed out at a spontaneous movement that  appeared to them to be another dirty trick by conservatives.

TEA PARTY BURDEN — PATRIOTS’ DILEMMA

If I haven’t made the point already, I apologize.  If the people, independent of political party, or with heavy influence on a party, are the last bastions of preservation of our founders’ ideology,  acting on the local level will be imperative — and the most important act will be to clean up the elections systems in each state, followed by a push for federal legislation that removes the current money chase.  Whatever you might think of John McCain, he at least identified an existential problem for our nation when he campaigned for election reform.  And that without taking up the current practice of micro-cheating on post-election challenges.

This cannot stand.

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Mexican Immigration Muddle

 Culture, Gangs, Government, History, Immigration, Legislation, Police
May 042010
 

Groundhog Day, aka Amnesty

Distribution of 12M Unauthorized 'guests'

Here’s the controversial Arizona law, SB 1070.  The following is just the first paragraph; the actual statute is 17 pages long.  What’s important to note, though, is that in the public conversation about this, THERE IS NO LAW; there is only the perception of a law.  The perception varies widely depending on group identification.  Opponents of immigration laws claim they are inherently racist because, well, their sponsors are racists.  A charge of racial profiling follows, borrowed from the worst experiences of African-Americans, who are not, in fact, illegal immigrants.

The problem is that linking historical racial strife with the word “profiling” delegitimizes the act of profiling, which has been an essential part of legitimate police work forever.  An explanation, here, from author Paul Schlicta, writing for The American Thinker. Since there was widespread public concern that the law permitted some form of racial profiling (by being ambiguous), a second draft allayed those fears.  There will always be lingering doubt, do to the human factor, but the law very closely parallels existing Federal legislation. Here’s an excerpt – regarding the changes to the law – from the PolitiFact blog, in case you wish to read in its entirety:

Critics had said that the original version of the law permitted racial profiling. But the changes signed by Brewer on April 30 were intended to blunt those charges.


The new version of the law says: “A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution.”

The prior version had said that an official “may not solely consider race” in such circumstances.

(“Solely,” above, was removed in the final bill.)

S.B. 1070

- 1 -
1 Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
2 Section 1. Intent
3 The legislature finds that there is a compelling interest in the
4 cooperative enforcement of federal immigration laws throughout all of
5 Arizona. The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make
6 attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local
7 government agencies in Arizona. The provisions of this act are intended to
8 work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of
9 aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United
10 States.
MEXICO’S TREATMENT OF IMMIGRANTS

And here, as described by investigative journalist Michelle Malkin, is how immigrants and visitors can expect to be treated in Mexico.  Note that everyone, native-born or visitor, has to carry ID; it’s jail time for failing to do so. (For obvious reasons, tourists are left alone.)  Political demonstrations are totally forbidden in Mexico.  Read the whole thing for perspective – then skip to the bottom of this post for the skinny on how Mexicans view our national sovereignty.

IMMIGRATION LAWS ARE NECESSARY.


If you want to make sure there are enough jobs for all Americans, you have to carefully control the number of people who come here for jobs.  America has been called a “beacon,” usually meaning for liberty, but certainly for financial opportunity as well.  We have the largest job markets, and we hire on ability.  If you can pool together a little money (family, friends and credit cards are the usual paths for beginners), you can start or buy a very small business and build it through hard work and imagination.  People from all over the world clamor to get from where they are to here, and we have formal national procedures for controlling this demand.

In other words, there is no possible way to not have immigration laws and procedures, as well as quotas and qualifications.  Many are waiting for visas and “green card” work permits, others for their approval for citizenship.  If people find a way to enter the country illegally (many overstay their visas and disappear into the population, for instance), they disadvantage all of those others who use our legal procedures. We are, indeed, a land of immigrants…legal immigrants, most of whom have become citizens and were proud to assimilate into American culture.

They didn’t do this to derogate their former culture which, after all, still remains in the land of their birth, but to celebrate, with us, the idea of  belonging to a nation dedicated to the protection of the individual from the state.  And the idea of free markets, where the individual chooses a  job, a career, a business to start.  Where a single human being’s idea can be owned and developed into a product or service that provides a livelihood for that person, as well as opportunity for anyone hired, and more choices for their customers.   Something that could be grown and shared. Or a job as a career path or stepping stone/learning experience.

They now could belong to a country, and a culture, that extends or withholds permissions to their government, not the other way around; not as in the country they left.  This is why immigrants gain citizenship and assimilate into our culture, and they want others to follow the same rules.  (I’ve heard that the actual bureaucracy that controls this is awful,  and the waiting times and screw-ups are legion, but that’s a subject for another post.)

So… there’s not just some arbitrary rule that say’s “Don’t cross our border without permission,” there’s a principle that precedes and underlies the rule:  ”We need to provide for our own citizen’s safety and opportunities first.  Also, by knowing who has entered our country, and for how long, our police and homeland security agencies have essential investigative information in case of a serious problem.  By knowing how many have entered, we can keep an eye on the job markets, as well as a fair distribution of visas for visitors from anound the globe.

It follows from the above that we simply have to control our 2,000 mile long border, determine our quotas, issue work permits before admitting non-citizens, and supply procedures for obtaining US citizenship.  Would it were so.  The border is porous, quotas and work permits become meaningless among a flood of illegal entries, and people who take the legal route are forced to wait many years to become citizens.  EXCEPT –anchor babies.  A child born in America is an American citizen, regardless of whether the parents arrived legally.  There are legal interpretations of this, but for another discussion.

Like the drug war, something as screwed up and persistent as this can only survive when it has a lot of active beneficiaries.  And that’s not even counting the illegal immigrants.  If you’re reading this for a solution, move on – we are way beyond solutions. (I’ve often been taken by the thought, expressed elsewhere, that it is impossible for most of us to accept that there are some problems for which there is no solution.)  In this case, the can has been kicked down the road so many times – by the governments involved – that to do something timely and effective is no longer possible, a situation that undoubtedly gladdens the heart of those benefiting from the gridlocked status quo.

THE ONGOING DILEMMA


It would be nice to have a complex description of all the sociological factors which contribute to the lack of gainful employment in the Mexican economy, but that’s not what this blog is about.  We’ll have to settle for the explanation that a lot of semi-literate, rural Mexican peasants see no opportunities in their own communities or, indeed, in their own country.  A parallel, more contemporary and probable explanation is that most illegals simply left a low wage Mexican job for a higher wage in the US.  American wages are high enough, apparently, to offset the risks involved in illegal border crossing, as well as the expense of paying a Coyote to facilitate the trip.

We can assume that most Mexican villagers by now are aware that you can be killed or seriously injured, and still find it a risk worth taking.  The reward is grinding work and deprivation in the US while sending money back to the family in Mexico. (Remittances are said to be about 2% of Mexican GDP, and the third largest source of foreign exchange, after oil and manufacturing.  The linked web site incorrectly states in its text narrative that remittances are 2nd largest.)

The map above is self-explanatory, with approximately 7 million of the total originating in Mexico.  There are a lot of reasons for the Mexican laborer to come here, including the complicity of his own government in laying off their economic and political problems on the US, and the US government tacitly helping business, as well as eventually broadening their base of voters.  (Both parties vie for the Mexican votes, and each is afraid of offending that community, even when some of the offended are officially criminals!)

But that doesn’t explain why, in a country with a 10% or higher unemployment rate, there are so many jobs available for the illegals to fill.  The Western US agricultural jobs that fostered the creation of the Braceros programs are the oldest and easiest to understand, and are probably the source of the canard that Mexicans fill jobs that Americans won’t take.  Well, if we’re only talking about stoop labor in the fields in a modern economy in which farming is only a tiny, but vital, part – no problem.  But what about all those manufacturing, construction, landscaping and service jobs scattered all over the country?

I can’t answer that here, but we can get some valuable help from the sources I’m excerpting and/or linking below.  We will have to return to this topic, as there are too many salient aspects to be covered in a short post.  I particularly want to explore more of what is happening on the other side of the border to exacerbate and perpetuate this dilemma. Meanwhile, a Cato Institute study shows that immigration has no negative impact on American job markets, and a study at Australia’s Monash University argues that increased legalization of the immigrant work force will benefit American workers higher-up in the job market, and grow the economy.  Here’s the Executive Summary of their report (below).  The entire report can be read on Cato’s site, here, and is 24 pages in length.

Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform

by Peter B. Dixon and Maureen T. Rimmer

Australia's Largest University

Peter Dixon is the Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor and Maureen Rimmer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Monash University in Australia. Their USAGE model of the U.S. economy has been used by the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Agriculture, and Homeland Security, and the U.S. International Trade Commission.

By the latest estimates, 8.3 million workers in the United States are illegal immigrants. Proposed policy responses range from more restrictive border and workplace enforcement to legalization of workers who are already here and the admission of new workers through a temporary visa program. Policy choices made by Congress and the president could have a major economic impact on the welfare of U.S. households.

This study uses the U.S. Applied General Equilibrium model that has been developed for the U.S. International Trade Commission and other U.S. government agencies to estimate the welfare impact of seven different scenarios, which include increased enforcement at the border and in the workplace, and several different legalization options, including a visa program that allows more low-skilled workers to enter the U.S. workforce legally.

For each scenario, the USAGE model weighs the impact on such factors as public revenues and expenditures, the occupational mix and total employment of U.S. workers, the amount of capital owned by U.S. households, and price levels for imports and exports. This study finds that increased enforcement and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households. Modest savings in public expenditures would be more than offset by losses in economic output and job opportunities for more skilled American workers.

A policy that reduces the number of low-skilled immigrant workers by 28.6 percent compared to projected levels would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion. In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households. Legalization would eliminate smugglers’ fees and other costs faced by illegal immigrants. It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higherskilled occupations. The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion.

Ralph Peters of the New York Post has spent a lot of time on these issues.  All of us are aware of the state of siege Mexico seems to be under by the narco-gangs who are killing their own citizens by the thousands and have been emboldened to kill some of ours, lately.  He has a lot to say about that, here, in an article entitled Border Disorder. His piece on the Arizona immigration law dilemma is called Blaming the Citizen, which I’d encourage you to read, here, or stay here for some Ralph Peters advice:

As the left’s blame-the-citizen demands for special privileges for all immigrants only intensify an anti-immigrant backlash, let’s apply some commonsense maxims:

* It is always the responsibility of the immigrant to conform to the laws and social norms of the host society. It is never the responsibility of a society to alter its traditions and values to please immigrants.

* The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens and territory. That demands robust border security.

* Illegal immigrants are entitled to basic human rights, but have no civil rights: no right to an attorney, trial or “sanctuary.”

* Washington must remove current incentives to illegal immigration. This means relentlessly pursuing both those who hire illegals and illegals themselves,  doubling sentences for illegal-immigrant offenders, and a constitutional amendment eliminating the automatic citizenship granted to children born on our soil to illegals.

* At the same time, we must reform our legal immigration system to recognize the need for temporary workers, as well as for qualified new citizens.

* Turning 10 million illegals into US voters is not the answer.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/blaming_the_citizen_RXEVoCdMKmfm5mPSxqBWfL#ixzz0myGFYnEn

Here’s a quick summary, and access, to a 26 page immigration proposal put out by the Senate Democrats.  It has a peculiar provision for a permanent immigration commission that bears an eerie similarity, in intent, to the Health Insurance Exchanges.

Democrats Unveil Outline for Amnesty


The proposal, which the Senators dubbed the REPAIR (Real Enforcement with Practical Answers for Immigration Reform) plan, did not come in the form of a bill, but a 26-page narrative describing what would be the main components of so-called “comprehensive immigration reform.”

The plan contains many of the provisions that made up the 2007 Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill (S.1639). It contains a mass amnesty program (called a “broad-based registration program”); a guest worker program with a path to citizenship; AgJOBS; the DREAM Act; an employment verification proposal based on a biometric social security card; and massive increases in legal immigration.

Unlike S.1639, the Reid proposal includes a commission on employment-based immigration to recommend policies that promote growth “while minimizing job displacement and wage depression and unauthorized employment”- a description that seems to concede that these are the natural result of our current immigration system.

This commission would be able to declare immigration emergencies, meaning a situation in which our employment-based system “is either substantially failing to admit a sufficient number of workers for the needs of the economy or is substantially admitting too many foreign workers.” After declaring an emergency, the commission would submit recommendations for changes to Congress and Congress would then be required to approve or vote down the recommendations. (See pp. 21-22 of the proposal).

Finally, we’d be remiss in not putting up the proposal by the two Arizona Senators.  Enjoy.

SENATORS McCAIN AND KYL ANNOUNCE BORDER SECURITY PLAN


10-Point Plan To Better Secure The U.S.-Mexico Border In Arizona April 20, 2010 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) were joined today by Arizona Sheriffs Larry Dever, Cochise County and Paul Babeu, Pinal County in introducing a 10-point comprehensive border security plan to combat illegal immigration, drug and alien smuggling, and violent activity along the southwest border.


Senators McCain and Kyl’s Ten Point Border Security Action Plan:


1) Immediately deploy 3,000 National Guard Troops along the Arizona/Mexico border, along with appropriate surveillance platforms, which shall remain in place until the Governor of Arizona certifies, after consulting with state, local and tribal law enforcement, that the Federal Government has achieved operational control of the border. Permanently add 3,000 Custom and Border Protection Agents to the Arizona/Mexico border by 2015.

2) Fully fund and support Operation Streamline in Arizona’s two Border Patrol Sectors to, at a minimum, ensure that repeat illegal border crossers go to jail for 15 to 60 days. Where Operation Streamline has been implemented, the number of illegal crossings has decreased significantly. Require the Obama Administration to complete a required report detailing the justice and enforcement resources needed to fully fund this program. Fully reimburse localities for any related detention costs.

3) Provide $100M, an increase of $40M, for Operation Stonegarden, a program that provides grants and reimbursement to Arizona’s border law enforcement for additional personnel, overtime, travel and other related costs related to illegal immigration and drug smuggling along the border.

4) Offer Hardship Duty Pay to Border Patrol Agents assigned to rural, high-trafficked areas, such as the CBP Willcox and Douglas Stations in the Tucson Sector.

5) Complete the 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico and construct double- and triple- layer fencing at appropriate locations along the Arizona-Mexico border.

6) Substantially increase the 25 mobile surveillance systems and three Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in place today along the Arizona/Mexico border and ensure the border patrol has the resources necessary to operate the UAVs 24 hours a day seven days a week. Send additional fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to the Arizona-Mexico Border.

7) Increase funding for vital radio communications and interoperability between CBP and state, local, and tribal law enforcement to assist in apprehensions along the border.

8)  Provide funding for additional Border Patrol stations in the Tucson Sector and explore the possibility of an additional Border Patrol sector for Arizona. Create six additional permanent Border Patrol Forward Operating Bases, and provide funding to upgrade the existing bases to include modular buildings, electricity and potable water. Complete construction of the planned permanent checkpoint in Arizona. Deploy additional temporary roving checkpoints and increase horse patrols throughout the Tucson Sector.

9) Require the Federal government to fully reimburse state and local governments for the costs of incarcerating criminal aliens. Start by at least funding the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) at its authorized level of $950 million.

10) Place one full-time Federal Magistrate in Cochise County and provide full funding for and authorization of the Southwest Border Prosecution Initiative to reimburse state, county, tribal, and municipal governments for costs associated with the prosecution and pre-trial detention of federally-initiated criminal cases declined by local offices of the United States Attorneys.

#

OH, BY THE WAY… THE MEXICANS WANT ALL THOSE SOUTHWESTERN STATES BACK, AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.  DO YOU?


Shores of Aztlán

As an important footnote, and possibly the subject of future posts, it’s important to note that many Mexicans feel quite strongly that a good portion of the American Southwest (all/pt. of 10 states) was stolen from them by the Gringos.  They don’t feel that our presence in those states is legitimate, or that there should be a border at all.  Their goal is to have many children, flood the area with their own people over time, and reclaim – in deed – what was supposedly taken from them.

The land they are slowly reclaiming is called Aztlán. Legend has it they originally migrated South from there, a spot that has been identified as on the border between Utah and Arizona, near Lake Powell (pictured,left). Their migration stopped near current Mexico city.  They like this story a lot, because it gives them a sense of provenance as an indigenous people that preceded the Europeans that ‘stole’ their land.

They call their plan for re-occupation of the Southwest the “Reconquista,” the re-conquest. I mention this as a clue to the seemingly irrational behavior of people who we have declared illegal.  They regard us as irrelevant; a passing nuisance.  Here’s a map of Aztlán – temporarily occupied by the United States of America.  Note the flag on the lower left designating the map as the “United States of Mexico.”  (This is not some peculiar cult; it’s embedded in Mexican culture!)

Reclaiming their "stolen" land

From the “Gringo” side of this equation – and border – we regard the Southwest territories depicted above as the spoils of war, ceded to us in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo(1848), following Mexico’s loss to American forces (1847) in the Mexican-American War (1846-1848.)  If every nation on the planet gave their country back to the original (conquered) indigenous peoples, a) nation-states would cease to exist, and b) You would spend a lot of time trying to determine the legitimate descendants, if any, of civilizations long gone from the planet.

You can only take the idea of “roots” so far.  It wouldn’t be unfair to compare the above map to the Palestinian map that is notably absent the existence of Israel.  It’s a cultural fantasy that is dangerously shared by the Mexican Mafia (here) and Latin gangbangers everywhere.  In other words, an ignorant, heavily armed and violent force that exists in large numbers in the US.  You can click to read a large database regarding gang activity in the US, including Mexican gangbangers.  This was a 2009 collaborative effort between the National Gang Intelligence Center and the National Drug Intelligence Center.

Here’s a summary of their findings:

National Gang Threat Summary

Gangs pose a serious threat to public safety in many communities throughout the United States. Gang members are increasingly migrating from urban to suburban areas and are responsible for a growing percentage of crime and violence in many communities. Much gang-related criminal activity involves drug trafficking; however, gang members are increasingly engaging in alien and weapons trafficking. Additionally, a rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships with U.S.- and foreign-based drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and other criminal organizations to gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs.

Key Findings

The following key findings were developed by analysis of available federal, state, and local law enforcement information; 2008 National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) National Drug Threat Survey (NDTS) data; and verified open source information:

  • Approximately 1 million gang members belonging to more than 20,000 gangs were criminally active within all 50 states and the District of Columbia as of September 2008.
  • Local street gangs, or neighborhood-based street gangs, remain a significant threat because they continue to account for the largest number of gangs nationwide. Most engage in violence in conjunction with a variety of crimes, including retail-level drug distribution.
  • According to NDTS data, 58 percent of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions in 2008 compared with 45 percent of state and local agencies in 2004.
  • Gang members are migrating from urban areas to suburban and rural communities, expanding the gangs’ influence in most regions; they are doing so for a variety of reasons, including expanding drug distribution territories, increasing illicit revenue, recruiting new members, hiding from law enforcement, and escaping other gangs. Many suburban and rural communities are experiencing increasing gang-related crime and violence because of expanding gang influence.
  • Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of the crime in many communities, according to law enforcement officials throughout the nation. Typical gang-related crimes include alien smuggling, armed robbery, assault, auto theft, drug trafficking, extortion, fraud, home invasions, identity theft, murder, and weapons trafficking.
  • Gang members are the primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs. They also are increasingly distributing wholesale-level quantities of marijuana and cocaine in most urban and suburban communities.
  • Some gangs traffic illicit drugs at the regional and national levels; several are capable of competing with U.S.-based Mexican DTOs.
  • U.S.-based gang members illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border for the express purpose of smuggling illicit drugs and illegal aliens from Mexico into the United States.
  • Many gangs actively use the Internet to recruit new members and to communicate with members in other areas of the United States and in foreign countries.
  • Street gangs and outlaw motorcycle gangs pose a growing threat to law enforcement along the U.S.-Canada border. They frequently associate with Canada-based gangs and criminal organizations to facilitate various criminal activities, including drug smuggling into the United States.

So, here – for your delectation…is the Treaty that got us the great American Southwest.

Spoils of War

In case you’re disturbed at the thought that you can’t really read this document and, in fact, have no way of knowing what’s behind the elegant red cover, you can see the document itself in the National Archives, here. You can also read the history of the Treaty and the war that preceded it.

Filling the Government Void

Since I’m not yet out of pictures, I’ll close with this one, that probably reflects the frustration of the 70% or so Arizonans who approve of the new immigration bill, and are tired of the really serious problems that come with being a border state and not being able to get the Federal Government to do its (non-exclusive) job of protecting the borders and enforcing immigration law.

Politicians are notorious for their fecklessness and opportunism, but sometimes they go further than citizens are willing to tolerate.  That’ll do ’til next time.

Thanks for reading this far.

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Slander Goldman To Avoid Scrutiny

 Government, Legislation, Markets
Apr 292010
 

Those are YOUR Junk Mortgages, Senator

J'accuse!


April 27, 2010  The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations


Comedy Gold as Senators (Levin, Collins, Kaufman,McCaskill,Coburn,McCain) pretended to be conducting a serious inquiry into the market practices of Goldman, Sachs.  They obstinately refused to recognize that the mortgage CDO managers were not, in fact, financial advisers to their clients.  Goldman’s  job is to engage parties on both sides of future transactions in assembling a package on which they agree to…yes, bet.  If Goldman subsequently decides to take a position on the CDO, it is not in regard to either supporting or betraying a client, but to managing their own risk regarding that deal, their current inventory of other instruments, and the market environment as it changes.  Their function is to create an instrument that can be used by both buyers and sellers, without regard to the quality of the underlying assets or the intentions of the investors on each side of the market.  (There is a price at which even the worst assets will be attractive to some professional investors – cheap enough for the longs and overpriced enough in the opinion of the shorts.)

Our elected heroes were not about engaging that idea, i.e. ‘reality.’  They had already assembled a narrative that must be supported:  that Goldman and its operatives were betraying the trust of their “clients.”  This clash between the fantasy political agenda – (aimed at bolstering a Democrat financial reform bill)  and technicians calmly explaining how their roles were not supportive of those assumptions – would have been more amusing if it were not a cynical attempt by the Senators to divert responsibility for the financial collapse from themselves (government creating the housing bubble) to Wall Street.

It’s probably worth noting that most Senators are lawyers who operate in a different mental paradigm than business or financial people.  In the lawyers’ world, transactions are about warrantying merchantability, the seller honestly representing the good or service sold, otherwise a fraud has occurred.  It’s an adversarial world in which such matters don’t come to their attention until the fraud is at least suspected.

In the business world, fraud occurs occasionally, but most transactions are necessarily cooperative and mutually beneficial or the buyer would stop buying and the seller would go out of business.  Some businesses, like finance, sometimes act only as intermediaries in a dynamic situation in which two or more parties will interact in the market, but need a predicate action performed by a third party before this can happen.  The intermediary is not recommending or predicting the outcome of any market actions taken by the other parties.  The intermediary could decide to take one side or another of any bet on the performance of the instrument they compiled from existing assets, and they – like their clients – could win or lose that bet.  Disclosure is not an issue.

Note that the lawyers, and many voters encouraged by their elected representatives, speak scornfully of derivatives – esp. Synthetic CDO’s, as just “casino gambling,” which, because of the lack of an actual trading of assets, ought, in their opinion, to be outlawed.  That’s crap.  The whole stock market is a casino, individuals and institutions with individuals’ money, betting on the outcome of just about anything that can occur in a complicated, dynamic world marketplace.  All of that – and the instruments used to make it happen – was just fine until everybody decided to bet that housing prices could rise indefinitely.  A bad bet, that would have caused a problem eventually, but not as bad as dropping the underwriting standards on the loans that made those housing transactions possible.

Nothing wrong with bundling mortgages into securities and selling them to a world market in large quantities – even via exotic instruments – providing the mortgages were made to people who could repay them.  So, our Senators and other congress-creatures can be smug about condemning Wall Street, and banks, for doing what they do well and in trillion dollar quantities, but let’s not forget that the government’s enthusiasm for cheap home ownership and government-guaranteed  lending was the tinder that allowed this blaze to be set.  And, not incidentally, that the officials righteously screaming J’accuse! at the Wall Streeters could have – along with the regulators they failed to oversee – nipped this whole thing in the bud years before the collapse.  Have they no shame?

The More Things Change...Senator Joseph McCarthy

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Anti-Capitalism as Climate Agenda

 Culture, Energy, Environment, Government, History, Legislation, Natural Gas, Oil, Solar, Wind
Apr 232010
 

Tell the Greens We've Had Enough

Al’s Better Environment

THE CLIP BELOW SHOWS our Socialist Climate Czar, appointed by President Obama without Senate confirmation.  Wanting World Government is fine if your job isn’t to advise the chief executive of only one of those governments.  Our government.  Unless, of course, her boss also wants a world government.

JANUARY, 2011 UPDATE:  Socialist Climate Czar Browner finally exits the Obama administration.

Alright!  We’ve now sat out our Earth Hour in the dark, partied our way through Earth Day celebrations (champagne, horns and confetti) and we’re careening our way toward the grand climax of Earth Month.  It just doesn’t get much better.  Meanwhile, out in media-land, drums of ink have been slathered, billions of electrons exhausted and countless events attended, all to congratulate ourselves on our obsession with a wholesome environment.  It’s the 40th year of a movement kicked off by an ambitious Democratic Senator trying to get out in front of the nascent protest movement manned by hippies, Marxist academics and assorted Nativists (see Rousseau, Thoreau, Marx).

Little did Senator Gaylord Nelson realize that the war protesters, collectivists and amateur anthropologists of then would evolve into an environmental movement that has a realistic goal of controlling the earth’s ecology through control of world government.  Like you, I am more than enthusiastic about natural conservation; about clean air and water and preservation of resources.  Where we part company is when these common-sense measures become a matter of personal virtue for some, and a pathway to political power for others.  (The latter, if you haven’t noticed, sets the agenda for the former.)

And having that agenda dictating measures to be taken in their private lives is welcomed by the faithful because it enhances their sense of virtue.  Intellectually lazy and dependent on propaganda from the movement leaders, they and their friends practice Environmentalism as a New Age religion, while the distant theoreticians scarcely feel the need to share where their group allegiance will take all of us.

I feel threatened by the movement because of where its leaders want to go, and why.  They surely know, as we all should by now, that this whole thing is not about our environment, or energy, or species:  it’s about the age old ‘Leftists against Capitalism.‘  Their plan is to replace it with something else, perhaps to be decided later, but initially through world government via the United Nations.  That means that our tired old paradigm born of the American Revolution will have to go – slowly, to be sure, but with finality.  Dustbin of history, and all that.  Since I like the founding principles of the US and don’t feel that we are experiencing a crisis of either Capitalism or the planet, I am totally opposed to going beyond prudent conservation principles and traditional free-market democracy – our Constitutional Republic.

On the lighter side, we have a bit of sardonic humor from George Carlin.  If foul language – which I personally adore – bothers you, skip on – if you wish – to my further fulminations on the environment and Leftist True Believers, following the 8 minute video.  In the interest of brevity, I’m going to be relying more on bullet points and hyperlinks to source material.  Some of this is speculative, and some simply can’t be known for sure at this stage of development, so if you’re looking for proof and certainty, you’re on your on, as am I.  We both have to fight through a haze of imperfect information, plus our own preconceptions and comforting convictions – and simply work hard to find verifiable  answers.

I have a proposition here; one I’ve raised before and will undoubtedly raise again, and that is this: Without Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by industrial nations’ emissions of CO2, we have no planetary emergency.  Without the emergency, or its probability, what we refer to as fossil fuels would not have to be restricted beyond the common-sense need to curb pollution.  Before spending trillions and completely upending our way of life in order to please both the virtuous and well-meaning, as well as the empire-building mal-intended, maybe we ought to tune up our BS detectors and dig a lot deeper into what’s going on here.

This calls for a quick anecdote.  I’m attending a local live theater performance of a play called “The Johnstown Flood” and I’m writhing in mental anguish as the clearly communist-inspired playwright has a young man striding about the stage and shouting for us to all stand up against the injustice of unequal pay.  I looked at my fellow attendees who were all twice the age of the actor – for sure – and probably the playwright as well, and were able to pay $53 a ticket and another $20 for parking only because of the Capitalist system being denounced for their edification.  Theater folks, you see, think that they are supposed to be our conscience.  Since their conscience is, culturally, Socialist, it’s all that’s on hand to deliver for our supposed benefit.

But here’s what I concluded with 20/20 hindsight.  All of us sat and quietly listened to this crap – resenting every minute, with no trace of entertainment benefit or provocative adult insight (something the theater used to do prior to becoming our ‘conscience’ – out of politeness. Out of courtesy, no one would boo or shout out denouncements, let alone throw tomatoes, a tradition long since past.  And I wondered if ourcowardice about this matter didn’t actually extend to the environmentalists and socialists, as well.  How many of us simply won’t tell our friends, or our Congress-Creature, or anyone, really, that Socialism is a murderous disaster.  Americans whine, but are too polite to complain.  We vote for personalities instead of substance.  Now, it’s serious, and unless we grow up, fast, the consequences will be as cruel as any in history.

Back to ‘Earth’:  Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and a man thoroughly despised by the Greens as a traitor, has a short, interesting piece here reminding us of the great strides that have been made with the environment and how stubborn environmental doctrine victimizes those in the developing world who need (fossil fuel) help most.  Take a quick look, right here.

In the same vein, but with more data points is Reason Magazine’s Science Editor, Ronald Bailey, author of “Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution.” He traces the history of Earth Day, its founder and goals.  His conclusion is that those goals have been almost completely realized and it’s time for a new approach.  Enjoy reading it, here.

Since we’re addressing both Climate Change and Global Green Ambitions, there are two more references that are pertinent.  In other words, the science and the politics.  On the political side, we turn to a site called undue influence.com, where they devote a lot of energy to following the politics of the Green Movement.  Since ruling the world is an idea that is considered too crazy or threatening to discuss openly, the proponents of global green dominance have to be listened to pretty closely in order to determine their agenda, and whether it seems possible.  Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise hit pay-dirt at a conference, and he shares his insights here. Read the whole thing.

Finally, for source material, we direct you to a really interesting paper!  It’s titled “ Oil is NOT a Fossil Fuel and AGW  is Non-Science.”  This is not a title meant for provocation, but a serious introduction to the Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic oil creation, one that has turned them (Russia) into the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation in the world today.  This is a very accessible read, with links to the science reports.  The second part of the article delves into the nonsense of Anthropogenic Global Warming, with references to proofs (supposedly) of its impossibility.  He also references the Petition Project, in which 30,000 scientists avow that the science is not remotely settled.  You can read the whole thing here.

Since that’s quite a bit to digest for one “Earth Blog,’  I think I’ll just limit myself to some provocative assertions, some linked, some not – more a matter of time spent in hyperlinking than the availability of source material.  Most everything in the non-comprehensive list that follows is actually contained in the links I’ve already provided, above.  Enjoy.

There is NO emergency for the planet

Cheap fuel is at the heart of our economy

We ARE self-sufficient in energy

There are NO fossil fuels

If petroleum is non-fossil in origin, is natural gas also?

If abiotic, there is no such thing as “Peak Oil”

Abiotic means geothermal, i.e. sustainable

If oil is unlimited, discontinue unnecessary subsidies of renewables

If renewable subsidies discontinued, possible ‘Green Bubble’ could result

Stop covering our land with windmills and solar panels (they’re ugly, inefficient,expensive and marginal)

Stop putting our corn in gas tanks, raising food prices

Stop the government’s ban on exploration and drilling

Nuclear is safe to dispose and recycle

Nuclear is expensive to build; very cheap to operate

Modern exhaust-gas filters and scrubber, together with carbon sequestration, make coal our cheapest and most plentiful US resource

Yucca mountain is fine:  good for storing current accumulation; not necessary with modern plants

Smaller nuclear plants mean faster build, economical, more numerous

Battery disposal may be ‘Achilles-wheel’ of electric car

Cost to consumer of battery-replacement (shortens car life; raises cost; disposal problem)

There is NO AGW

CO2 is essential to life on earth (we exhale it; trees inhale it – it’s essential plant food)

CO2 is a trace gas

An increase in CO2 doesn’t increase ambient temperature

CO2 is a RESULT of warming; not a CAUSE

Warming is caused by the sun:  Heliocentric Global Warming

Predicted global catastrophe is based on flawed computer modeling

Models have failed to accurately predict short term or recent past

Not possible to predict long term

Scientific community has been bought by grant money

Government and Industry have bought into a “Green Economy”

Scientific method has been abandoned, i.e., consensus is a political word, not science

Many specialists (retired, non-academic, i.e., beyond coercion) say climate science is young and indefinite

Our air and water have already been purified substantially over the last 40 years

It is poverty, not prosperity, that destroys habitat

DDT is safe

GMO food is safe

Climate, energy and food debates are actually about Capitalism vs. Socialism

Premise behind movement is that technical progress and financial complexity are self-destructive; in order to heal humanity, we must return to a more simple, biologically harmonious way of life (see Rousseau; Thoreau; Marx).

Western NGO’s are governments-in-waiting, dedicated to world government on socialist model, w/environmentalism as pathway to power

Marx regarded Capitalism as a necessary step on the path to socialism

Mass transit is impractical and unnecessary (large urban, approx 1.7% of all transport)

The automobile is our liberating reward for study and work and good government.

Transport is technically-evolving with private-sector funds

Governments want to OWN the sources of taxation; eliminate the independent wealth-creator

Urban sprawl is code for affordable growth

Central Planning is inherently authoritarian and regressive

Glaciers are supposed to melt (results in beneficial fresh-water lakes)

Polar Bears are aquatic and increasing in number

Some of our viewers on this site have written requesting more opinion; well, the above should be enough to last you until the next Earth Day!

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ObamaCare Repeal Possibilities

 Government, Health Care, Health Care Reform, History, Legislation, Taxation
Mar 312010
 

FDR,ObamaCare & States' Rights

YouTube Preview Image

The Judge (yes, he’s a real judge) gives us a heads-up, straight from the Constitution – a short video that’s a good start for a quick exploration of this ObamaCare repeal issue.  FYI, the Interstate Commerce Clause and General Welfare provisions are not valid bases for imposing this legislation on the states and individuals.  To find out why, we do some historical, political and legal analysis.  So, either strap yourself in or risk emotional and intellectual whiplash.

First up is our link to a powerful look at how we’ve been here before, how it turned out, and the guidance offered for ourselves and the current administration.  J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker had a well-commented-upon post up yesterday called The Supreme Court and FDR’s Power Grab. Now, I know a lot of you are going “Here we go again, the old Conservative animus against FDR.”  Not so…at least not predominantly.  This is thoughtful, relevant history that can be easily checked out.  I urge you to take a look – it’s a fun and informative read.

Next, a short, healthy dose of Public Policy research by The Foundry, a policy blog from the conservative Heritage Foundation. They dig a little deeper than Judge Napolitano, especially regarding constitutional limitations on federal power.

None of these clauses—or any others found in the Constitution—gives Congress the power to create a government healthcare system.

The “General Welfare” clause gives Congress the power “To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”  This clause is not a grant of power to Congress (as constitutional law professor Gary Lawson has shown). It is a limit to a power given to Congress. It limits the purpose for which Congress can lay and collect taxes.

Finally, a contemporary take by political analyst Dick Morris on the steps necessary to repeal and how he weighs its chances of success.  In a blog post for Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government, he has a post titled Take Back Congress to Stop ObamaCare. As you would expect, his is not the conventional, angry take on how to fight the constitutionality of this bill.

The Obama health care bill was an authorization measure which established a program and set down its parameters. But authorization bills are not appropriations. Each year the Congress must act on appropriations for each department and agency in the government. If no funds are appropriated, nothing can be spent.

Just in case you are out of time, patience or interest and decide to not go read this very short piece by Morris, I have to confess I really got a kick out of his Uncle Sam poster.  So, through the magic of blog technology, here it is:

Morris is Serious About This

That’s pretty much of a wrap.  We’ll be talking about this for the next four to six years, by which time the Democrats expect we will be totally (as in totalitarian) embracing ObamaCare in all its particulars, and the notion of repeal will be a small footnote in the history books.  Or not

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Cops Sold My Stuff!

 Government, Housing, Legislation, Police
Mar 302010
 
YouTube Preview Image

Famous Asset Seizer

If you think cars and houses and other personal belongings are only seized, kept and sold by the police when dealing with suspected drug dealers, you’ve got another think coming.  This is done much more broadly and is being used by some police jurisdictions to supplement their budgets.  I got used to the idea some time ago that our legislators prefer not to give too much thought to the constitutionality of their laws, always willing to blame the president, or to act knowing it will be many years before the law can be challenged and adjudicated.

Here is a comprehensive report - complete with a book you can download for free or buy in print – on a subject that, while clearly not at the top of anyone’s agenda right now, is about a situation Americans, on principle, should not tolerate.  The Institute for Justice, which I had not heard of before encountering them on law professor Glen Reynold’s excellent blog site, Instapundit, is all over this subject, breaking it down into as many morsels as you might have time to digest at any one time.  I strongly suggest you use the above link and explore the work of these excellent legal crusaders.

Just one more thing.  This report sent me scrambling for my copy of the US Constitution.  Sure enough, right there in the Bill of Rights is our protection from “unreasonable searches or seizures.”  Seems that King George (no, not Bush) had something called “Writs of Assistance” that allowed searching and seizure at anytime, in any place.  I can’t find myself getting nuanced enough to think that today’s asset forfeitures are any different.  No trial.  Not even an arrest.  Deserves our attention.  Enjoy.


Executive Summary

Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture is the most comprehensive national study to examine the use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture and the first study to grade the civil forfeiture laws of all 50 states and the federal government.

Under state and federal civil asset forfeiture laws, law enforcement agencies can seize and keep property suspected of involvement in criminalactivity.  Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, with civil forfeiture, a property owner need not be found guilty of a crime—or even charged—to permanently lose her cash, car, home or other property.

Incentives for Abuse

In most states and under federal law, law enforcement can keep some or all of the proceeds from civil forfeitures.  This incentive has led to concern that civil forfeiture encourages policing for profit, as agencies pursue forfeitures to boost their budgets at the expense of other policing priorities.

These concerns are exacerbated by legal procedures that make civil forfeiture relatively easy for the government and hard for property owners to fight.  For example, once law enforcement seizes property, the government must prove it was involved in criminal activity to forfeit or permanently keep it.  But in nearly all states and at the federal level, the legal standard of proof the government must meet for civil forfeiture is lower than the strict standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” required for criminal convictions.

Likewise, many jurisdictions provide an “innocent-owner” defense that allows owners to get their property back if they had no idea it was involved in a crime.  However, in most places, owners bear the burden of establishing their innocence.  In other words, with civil forfeiture, property owners are effectively guilty until proven innocent.

Finally, federal civil forfeiture laws encourage abuse by providing a loophole to law enforcement in states with good laws for property owners:  “equitable sharing.”  With equitable sharing, state law enforcement can turn over seized assets to the federal government, or they may seize them jointly with federal officers.  The property is then subject to federal civil forfeiture law—not state law.  Federal law provides as much as 80 percent of the proceeds to state law enforcement and stacks the deck against property owners.  Thus, the equitable sharing loophole provides a way for state and local law enforcement to profit from forfeitures that they may not be able to under state law.

Extent of Forfeiture Use

In Part I of this study, criminal justice researchers Marian R. Williams and Jefferson E. Holcomb of Appalachian State University and Tomislav V. Kovandzic of the University of Texas at Dallas find the use of asset forfeiture is extensive at all levels of government and growing:

  • In 2008, for the first time in history, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Assets Forfeiture Fund (AFF) held more than $1 billion in net assets—that is, money forfeited from property owners and now available for federal law enforcement activities after deducting various expenses.  A similar fund at the U.S. Treasury Department held more than $400 million in net assets in 2008.  By contrast, in 1986, the year after the AFF was created, it took in just $93.7 million in deposits.
  • State data reveal that state and local law enforcement also use forfeiture extensively:  From 2001 to 2002, currency forfeitures alone in just nine states totaled more than $70 million.  This measure excludes cars and other forfeited property, as well as forfeitures from many states that did not make data available for those years, and so likely represents just the tip of the forfeiture iceberg.
  • Equitable sharing payments to states have nearly doubled from 2000 to 2008, from a little more than $200 million to $400 million.

Policing for Profit

Civil forfeiture encourages policing for profit according to an analysis of national data by Williams, Holcomb and Kovandzic.  Specifically, they find that when state laws make forfeiture more difficult and less rewarding, law enforcement instead takes advantage of easier and more generous federal forfeiture laws through equitable sharing.

The researchers tested three elements of state law and found that all three, either independently or in combination, affect equitable sharing proceeds.  As state laws improve for property owners, use of the equitable sharing loophole rises:

  • Profit Motive:  Law enforcement agencies in states with no profit motive (no forfeiture proceeds to law enforcement) will receive more in equitable sharing than agencies in states with a 100-percent profit motive—an increase of $30,000 per year for an average-sized law enforcement agency, representing an increase of 25 percent of equitable sharing dollars.
  • Innocent Owner Burden:  Presuming owners are innocent instead of guilty, thus better protecting owners and making civil forfeiture harder for law enforcement, leads to an increase in equitable sharing of $27,600 per year for an average-sized law enforcement agency, growth of about 23 percent.
  • Standard of Proof:  In states where owners are presumed innocent, raising by one level the standard of proof the government must meet to forfeit property leads to an increase in equitable sharing payments of $16,860 per year for an average-sized agency, an increase of about 14 percent.

These results demonstrate not only that federal equitable sharing is a loophole that state and local law enforcement use to circumvent strict state laws but also that pursuit of profit is a significant motivator in civil forfeiture actions.  Simply put, when laws make civil forfeiture easier and more profitable, law enforcement engages in more of it.

Grading Forfeiture Laws and Behavior

In Part II, Institute for Justice attorney Scott Bullock details the civil forfeiture laws and data for each state and the federal government.  He also grades the states based on the same three elements of state law Williams, Holcomb and Kovandzic test, as well how much state and local law enforcement use the equitable sharing loophole.
Bullock finds:

  • Only three states—Maine, North Dakota and Vermont—receive a combined grade of B or higher.  The other 47 states all receive Cs or Ds.
  • Most state civil forfeiture laws provide little protection to property owners.  Six states receive an F and 29 states receive a D for their laws alone.  Lax federal laws earn the federal government a law grade of D-.
  • Eight states receive a B or higher for their laws: Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio and Vermont.  But extensive use of equitable sharing pulls down the final grades of five of those states: Indiana (C+), Maryland (C+), Missouri (C+), North Carolina (C+) and Ohio (C-).
  • The lowest-graded states overall, combining both poor laws and aggressive use of equitable sharing, are Georgia, Michigan, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.
  • Public accountability over civil asset forfeiture in the states is extremely limited.  Only 29 states clearly require law enforcement to collect and         report forfeiture data, and just 19 of those states responded to freedom-of-information requests with usable data—and the data provided were often meager.  In most states, we know nothing or next-to-nothing about the use of civil forfeiture or its proceeds.

Based on these findings, Bullock offers in a foreword to this study several recommendations for reform to better protect property rights.  Short of abolishing civil forfeiture, he advocates eliminating the profit motive, leveling the playing field for property owners, providing more public accountability and closing the equitable sharing loophole.

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Busting Up the Big Banks

 Government, History, Legislation, Markets
Mar 272010
 

SAVED OUR BANKS

That’s J.P. Morgan there, on the left.  Before the Federal Reserve was founded, he had, on more than one occasion, rounded up the resources to save our financial system from collapse.  No taxpayer funds.

The crux of the argument for breaking up the big banks and hedge funds is that they were to blame for the ’08 Recession, and doing something to prevent the next one depends on not allowing large, global financial institutions.  (There are a few economists and a large slice of the population wed to this notion.)  Nevertheless, it seems to me this is simply confusing cause and effect:  If you don’t feed garbage into a global economic network, you won’t get garbage out.  The whole thing was working just fine until we stuffed it with worthless mortgages.  (I know…derivatives, short sales, low Fed rates, Mark-to-Market, stove-piping,collusive rating agencies,creative instruments,etc.)

Worthless mortgages don’t simply appear without cause.  Someone has to relax the underwriting standards that have kept our mortgage lending stable for fifty years or more.  Since everyone involved is government licensed and regulated, conducting their business in the shadow of city, state and federal regulations, who are we to assume was the initial and primary cause of the problem?  Was it the hedge fund managers?  The derivative designers and traders?  The Federal Reserve?  The insurance companies?  The large depository-bank trading operations?

There were plenty of people in the financial markets who behaved badly, but they are the most highly regulated (on paper) on the planet. The regulators simply did not regulate, and their over-seers in Congress, although warned repeatedly, failed to act.  It is only government regulators that had the power to start or stop this disaster, and they have only as much authority as Congress is willing to give them.  (Ask yourself this:  Does Congress really want regulators so independent they will call a halt to actions Congress supports? Are some laws written as congressional cover and not to be enforced?  Where does that over-riding phone call come from when a regulator threatens to overstep his bounds?  By actually regulating.)  Everyone involved behaved as they were incentivized.  Having a powerful government wanting everyone to own a home –  regardless of their ability to pay – was the problem, and still is.

The Community Reinvestment Act, which was properly founded to prevent “redlining” of loans in minority neighborhoods, was stable and uneventful until the push in the late 90′s, by Congress and the Clinton administration (and ACORN,by the way), to hugely increase the quotas for lo-doc loans. (The Bush Administration supported the housing push, as well, but wanted much larger reserves for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – Congress refused.)  Fannie and Freddie were Turbo-charged, and they in turn empowered Countrywide and the financial markets to create, package and distribute toxic assets into a worldwide market in which trillions of dollars travel daily.

The system did not fail because of the relaxation of the Glass-Steagall Act (preventing depository institutions and investment banks from combining).  The only bank in the whole system that fit that description was Citi.  And it’s useless to try and blame the thousands of neighborhood banks, most of whom made and kept their own loans.

In my not-so-humble opinion, our current administration and a sympathetic Congress are using this crisis to deflect blame away from themselves and onto the financial markets – and as an opportunity to satisfy an old, Leftist dream of bringing down Capitalism.  And what better start than to slowly dismantle the large banks at the forefront of our international prosperity and influence?  If you reflect on it, you realize these institutions cannot function adequately if they are not large and international – operating, as they do, in hundreds of countries.

So, when Democratic Senator Kaufman, of Delaware, in the clip that follows (25 mins), rants about ending “Too Big to Fail,” I think he really is announcing his party’s intention of ending American international banking.  I urge you to spend a little time at the link, because it appears to be the definitive Democrat statement on the subject – and their sincere intentions.

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Congressional Roots of Financial Crisis

 Government, Housing, Legislation
Mar 232010
 

The Bankers Did It!

An amazing 3.5 million people have watched this You Tube Video of our tax dollars in action.  It’s been deliberately edited for length and to highlight what is now characterized as a partisan position, rather than salient historical evidence of Congressional chicanery.  You decide.  I decided long ago that, although an enormous amount of bad behavior occurred in the financial industry, without being fed worthless mortgage assets encouraged by the folks you see on the tape (and President Clinton) – accompanied by a deliberate relaxation in regulatory oversight – we might have just had a normal recession.

The guy who Congressman Meeks is yelling at on the tape is from (oh-fay-oh) the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a division of HUD.  It’s been succeeded by FHFA, the Federal Housing Finance Agency that publishes the Housing Price Index, using data from Fannie and Freddie.  He was catching hell because his agency was responsible for regulation of the Government Sponsored Entities (GSE’s) and he was apparently trying to warn about the impending mortgage crisis.  I apologize for not having checked on the context in which this hearing took place; my purpose here is to make sure this video is available on this site for those not already familiar with it.  We can revisit the Franklin Raines (Fannie Mae CEO) scandal some other time, if necessary, and maybe dig into how Fannie’s practices came to be called into public question.  Enjoy.

{video}httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

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Paul Ryan(R-Wis) Tells Obama True Health Care Costs

 Government, Health Care Economics, Health Care Reform, Legislation, Taxation
Mar 212010
 

President Obama Sits Stunned

Is ObamaCare Worth This Much??

Long after the Great Health Care Reform Debate of 2009 & ’10 has become part of the history that goes untaught in our pathetic public school system, this six minutes of video will inform.  Not only the ‘emperor’s clothes’ blast of reality concerning the health care numbers that had been fronted by the Democrats, but a priceless lack of reaction from a normally voluble and argumentative President.  If you haven’t watched this on You Tube, already – and you really care about accuracy in this issue – spend a few minutes, and prepare to dazzle your friends!

If this clip is way too Republican and one-sided for you, take a look at our recent Post linking to a lecture by the President’s health care economist, titled “ObamaCare’s Planner Here,” starring MIT prof Jonathan Gruber.  Enjoy!

{video}httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=211odCXDqz8

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Individual Mandate Grows IRS Intrusions, Confiscations

 Government, Legislation, Taxation
Mar 192010
 

Better Buy some Health Insurance

It just gets better.  We’ve all known for a while that the IRS is to be given authority over compliance with the Individual Mandate Tax (IMT), but it may not have been obvious to you that it means they will be responsible for ascertaining individual compliance.  Representatives Dave Camp (R-MI), Ranking Member, and Charles Boustany (R-LA) of the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and Means, have just issued a nine page report that sheds light on some of the scary details.

It occurs to me that if we were to ever encounter some miraculous policy-making window that would allow us to debate alternatives to the current income tax system, these additional IRS powers (and huge expansion of personnel) would make the decision even more difficult than now; but maybe someone in D.C. has already had the same thought.

Here’s my transcript of their Executive Summary:

HIGHLIGHTS OF NEW IRS AUTHORITY


  • IRS agents verify if you have “acceptable” health care coverage
  • IRS has the authority to fine you up to $2,250, or 2% of your income (whichever is greater) for failure to prove that you have purchased “minimum essential coverage”
  • IRS can confiscate your tax refund
  • IRS audits are likely to increase
  • IRS will need up to $10 billion to administer the new health care program this decade
  • IRS may need to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents and other employees to investigate and collect billions in new taxes from Americans
  • Nearly half of these new individual mandate taxes (IMT) will be paid by Americans earning less than 300% of poverty ($66,150 for a family of four)

SPECIAL EXEMPTION

Democrats prohibit the IRS from imposing these taxes and penalties on illegal immigrants

The full report can be viewed here.

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Is ObamaCare Really RomneyCare Writ Large?

 Government, Health Care, Legislation
Mar 172010
 

Not Just Health Care

I highly commend to your attention this eye-popping article in today’s Wall Street Journal written by Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. Although Romney, who will probably once-again be running for President is obliged to deny it, RomneyCare in his home state of Massachusetts is experiencing all the cost and coverage problems the ObamaCare critics have been proclaiming  for the last year.

There are only four major insurance companies in the state, according to the author, which bolsters my own conclusion in articles previously written on this blog, that companies restricted to a relatively small area cannot enjoy the benefits that competition in a much larger geographic area would produce:  primarily, a larger risk pool that could keep cost low while providing comprehensive coverage with no exclusions.  Of course, no one has experience with a large system of that type, but we can see in this article that it doesn’t work in a small one.  Here’s a bit of what she says:

While Massachusetts’ uninsured rate has dropped to around 3%, 68% of the newly insured since 2006 receive coverage that is heavily or completely subsidized by taxpayers. While Mr. Romney insisted that everyone should pay something for coverage, that is not the way his plan has turned out. More than half of the 408,000 newly insured residents pay nothing, according to a February 2010 report by the Massachusetts Health Connector, the state’s insurance exchange.

Another 140,000 remained uninsured in 2008 and were either assessed a penalty or exempted from the individual mandate because the state deemed they couldn’t afford the premiums.

Mr. Romney’s promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. One third of state residents polled by Harvard researchers in a study published in “Health Affairs” in 2008 said that their health costs had gone up as a result of the 2006 reforms. A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.

The state’s stubbornly high health costs are partly the result of intrusive government regulations that stifle competition in the insurance market and strict mandates on what services insurance must cover. A 2008 study by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that the state’s most expensive insurance mandates cost patients more than $1 billion between July 2004 and July 2005. The Massachusetts health reform law left all of them in place.

Further, insurance companies are required to sell “just-in-time” policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That’s just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later.

The worst part is that the doctor and hospital shortages and extended wait times for care are exactly what our press generally refuses to describe in the foreign universal-care systems that the Obamanists seem to adore.  I think we’re in for a very rough ride.

via Grace-Marie Turner: The Failure of RomneyCare – WSJ.com.

ADDENDUM A:

The Boston Herald just broke the news that Tim Cahill, the State Treasurer, says the state health system is being propped up with federal dollars in order to allow ObamaCare to use it as a model.  The column, by journalist Jessica van Sack, is here.

The real problem is that this . . . sucking sound of money has been going into this health-care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that it’s being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through.”

Gov. Deval Patrick argues the state’s universal health care program has added 1 percent to the budget, but Cahill said the real impact is buffered by federal dollars.

Stay tuned for more skullduggery.  There’s a lot of desperation in Foggy Bottom.

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Prohibition Stupid & Immoral

 Culture, Gangs, Government, Health Care, Legislation, Markets, Rule of Law
Mar 172010
 

Funding Enemies; Subverting Civilization; Incentivizing Crime

We Just Never Learn

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial on Monday, March 15th regarding the previous Saturday’s massacre of American citizens in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas:

President Obama expressed outrage Sunday over the broad-daylight massacre in Juarez of a pregnant American U.S. consular employee and her husband, which left their 1-year-old baby wailing in the back of their car. Within 10 minutes, a second attack by machine-gun-toting thugs killed the husband of another U.S. consular employee and injured his two children, ages 4 and 7, traveling in a separate car. All were returning from the same child’s birthday party.

Killings like this in the border city near El Paso are so numerous the State Department cautions against assuming it was a targeted hit — “although we are not discounting anything,” said spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet.

The death toll in the Mexican drug war has hit 19,000 now, with Juarez the worst-hit. Over the weekend, 50 people were killed elsewhere in Mexico.

The editorial goes on to rail against the violence directed at Americans, and calls for a tougher approach, on both sides of the border, to back up our inadequate $1.6 billion in equipment and training funds to fight the cartels.

While I am normally in agreement with the IBD editorial board, on this issue we part company.  It is outrageous, immoral and delusional that, given the obvious carnage caused by prohibition – American prohibition – anyone can write with sincerity that the solution to the problem is stronger prohibition.  It doesn’t work.  It hasn’t worked.  It will never work.  Passing laws against human nature in order to enforce a social preference couched as a moral crusade against addiction is – in light of the observable global consequences – immoral.  We have the addiction anyway, because the prospect of illicit earnings propagates armies of drug salesmen looking to create new addicts.  That’s the incentive system and unintended consequence of law that we knew was bad when we were forced to repeal the 18th amendment to the Constitution.

Further consequences, without even trying to be comprehensive, are:  1)  Funding our enemies in the War on Terror, 2)  Exacerbating a sense of racial isolation among American minorities, esp. Blacks and Latinos, by stuffing our prisons with drug offenders, 3)  Propagating criminal cartels and gangs all over the world, many of which are better armed than the police or army – and have no regard for the lives of other citizens, 4)  Undermines the rule of law and the viability of our institutions by the use of bribery and intimidation – as well as huge shadow-economy profits that distort the economic life and incentives in any communities affected.

There comes a point in any large system where – regardless of its desirability or outcomes – so many people have a stake in its maintenance that it cannot be voluntarily changed.  At that point, only catastrophic collapse is possible.  We’re getting close to that conclusion, but I would like for our editorial writers to at least acknowledge that – so that we at least have the possibility of saving ourselves from this monstrosity in some more rational way.

Even just since the Nixon years, when the latest chapter of this ongoing debacle was written, shelves of largely ignored books have been printed, warning of the wrongheadedness of the scheme and its horrible consequences to individuals and whole societies.  The bad consequences of addiction under legalization and regulation don’t even come close.  And I assume that the journalist who wrote the article sincerely believes that the effort formerly called “the drug war” is correct policy, probably because, as William Bennett – one of our former Drug Czars believed – we simply cannot have a society that tolerates widespread drug use.  Moral decay followed by chaos and economic collapse.  And, of course, there’s really no such thing as ‘recreational drugs.’  Really?

That would be a fitting end to this rant, were it not for your all-time favorite feature:

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS

  • As drug cartels become more common – in your community and mine, with violent intimidation and bribery the norm (plata o plomo) – who will you be able to trust?
  • Do we tolerate the midnight raids on the wrong addresses and the resultant harassment – and occasional deaths – of our fellow citizens because it’s always happening to someone else; maybe someone you would never personally be associated with?
  • If millions of people routinely used marijuana in the 70′s and are currently productive members of society, how is it a “Gateway Drug?”
  • Did you know that most of our burglaries are caused by junkies trying to get money to support their habit, and that England briefly had a successful program that allowed heroin addicts to get their drug by prescription – not to get high, but to maintain themselves in order to function in normal jobs (a program, I hear, that was stopped by pressure from the US government)?
  • How are our unemployment statistics skewed by the existence of such a massive Black Market?
  • How profoundly does this affect the family and societal dynamics within Black and Latino communities?
  • Other than the cartels and minor drug pushers, who is profiting from the status quo, and why should we tolerate it?
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Pelosi Tea Party Propaganda

 Culture, Government, Health Care, Legislation
Mar 162010
 

Nancy

This via Steve Stevlic of Tea Party Patriots Chicago and Rich Johns of Chicago Townhall Meetup.  Hope they don’t mind my pilfering, but it is clearly a good FYI for everyone who understands the essentiality of the Tea Party Movement and the consequent need to combat the lies used to thwart the will of the people.

It looks like Pelosi has had to rethink her original position of characterizing patriots as a bunch of kooks; probably a reflexive reaction based on her notion that the only people who legitimately conduct public demonstrations are Leftists, or those organized, bussed, duped by them.  The list of supposed health care myths and recommended responses to them deserves a good Fisking, but this has already been done repeatedly on the floors of Congress.
Suffice it to say that her staff appears to be either too lazy or too intellectually bankrupt to come up with better lies than those that follow on this list.  Might be interesting to note, though – since she’s still bothered by the idea of Death Panels – that it is not the explicit language of any bill that results in that conclusion, but the totality of the organization that makes it inevitable (not to mention the experience of the other countries currently practicing universal health care).  Enjoy.
By Steve Stevlic, on Mar 15, 2010

Tuesday, March 16 will be a day of action both in Washington DC and here in the Chicago area.

Nancy Pelosi is resigned to the fact that on Tuesday DC will be overrun by people who actually want Congressmen to read the bill before they vote on it,want to know how healthcare will be paid for and want to know where in the constitution does the government have the power to control the healthcare industry and mandate American citizens to purchase health insurance.Pelosi and Reid

Here is the memo her staff sent to their members on how to deal with Tea Partiers:

FROM SPEAKER PELOSI:

From: Thornell, Doug [mailto:Doug.Thornell@mail.house.gov]
Sent: Monday, March 15, 2010 5:25 PM
To: Thornell, Doug
Subject: Tea Party Etiquette

TO: Freshman and Sophomore House Democrats

FROM: Office of the Assistant to the Speaker

DATE: March 15, 2010

RE: Tea Party Etiquette

As many of you have read, tomorrow, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, tens of thousands of conservative and Tea Party activists will be on the Hill as part of what they are dubbing a “Surge Against Obamacare.” Rick Scott, a multimillionaire investor and former hospital executive, is helping to lead the grassroots effort along with a number of other groups on the right like Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. While many of you have met with outspoken activists in your districts in the past, we wanted to remind you of some of the best practices to review with your DC staff:

1. Be prepared. Activists are expected to begin arriving around 9am and they have been given instructions to wait in your office until they can have a meeting. Please have an orderly process and enough staff and interns to welcome what could be a very large number of visitors throughout the day:

· Have staff and/or Member time set-aside to visit with attendees in small groups;

· Ask for extra chairs or seating to be brought to your office or the hall in case there are seniors or disabled visitors that need to be accommodated;

· Consider having some light snacks, H2O, and coffee available;

· Ask visitors to leave all signs and banners outside the office.

2. Prioritize listening to your constituents:

· Have multiple guest books/comment sheets available for all visitors to sign-in and leave comments – we recommend you have one for residents of your district, one for residents of your state (but not your district), and one for out-of-state visitors. Have a Capitol Directory and map available to direct visitors to their Member of Congress and written instructions on how to get over to the Senate side of the Hill.

· There is limited rationale for your Member to meet with out-of-district constituents, especially if you already had other business or meetings previously scheduled with constituents who had planned to visit with you tomorrow on other topics. It is up to individual offices to decide if staff would like to take these meetings.

3. Listen and communicate in small groups:

· As we learned in August, small groups are typically the best venue for exchanges on this complicated topic.

· Many of the conservative activists are not opposing the actual provisions in the bill, but are instead reacting to a caricature of the reform bill presented by right-wing media outlets. In fact, many conservative and GOP ideas and concerns are addressed in the legislation:

  • Reduces the deficit;
  • Cracks down on Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse;
  • Provides historic tax credit for small businesses and individuals to purchase health insurance;
  • Allows consumers to shop for health insurance across state lines via multi-state compacts;
  • Inaugurates medical malpractice reforms, (an area where the GOP failed to take any action when in charge of Congress for 12 years).
  • Also, don’t assume common myths about this bill have been debunked. Be prepared to explain that there are no death panels, that Medicare is in fact strengthened, and that reform is not a government take-over, but it is an attempt to crack down on the abusive practices of health insurance companies by providing oversight and increasing competition.
  • Finally, work to establish common-ground with visitors by ensuring they are aware and supportive of the important changes that will take place immediately:
  • Offer tax credits to small businesses to purchase coverage;
  • Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
  • Provide immediate access to insurance for uninsured Americans who are uninsured because of a pre-existing condition through a temporary high-risk pool;
  • Prohibit dropping people from coverage when they get sick in all individual plans;
  • Eliminate lifetime limits and restrictive annual limits on benefits in all plans;
  • Require premium rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and require public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied to overhead costs;
  • Ensure consumers have access to an effective internal and external appeals process to appeal new insurance plan decisions;
  • Require plans to cover an enrollee’s dependent children until age 26;
  • Require new plans to cover preventive services and immunizations without cost-sharing;
  • Relief on the Donut Hole.
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FUQ: 2 Big 2 Fail – 2 small 2 Succeed

 Government, Legislation, Markets
Mar 082010
 

FREQUENTLY UNASKED QUESTIONS


I Tweeted on this earlier, although I’ve been made to understand that no one under thirty tweets anymore.  So, hello adults!  Just a couple of quick Q’s on 2 Big 2 Fail:

1)  If a company cannot be allowed to get too big to fail (or too big for antitrust laws), does it need to be too small to succeed in the global marketplace?

2)  Does a law that allows the orderly unwinding of a large, global enterprise solve the problem?

3)  If 2, above, is yes:  What is the threshold for action, and who is to decide?

4)  If government-initiated and supervised unwinding is enacted, what is to prevent such a process from being abused by the political party in power?

5)  Is this government authority not just one step from reasonably proposing laws that convert our largest financial institutions into regulated utilities?

6)  Would it not then be logical, for the safety and stability of markets and the protection of the consumer to do the same with any large businesses considered ‘vital?’  (The reasons given for this necessity can vary from jobs to national security  - the world has seen this movie before.)

Uh-oh, we’re once again edging toward  that slippery Socialist slope that is toxic to capitalism and a free society. Maybe it would be good to remind ourselves that the Crash of ’08 was caused by feeding junk assets into a global financial behemoth, rather than by the size of either the system or its parts.

It would really be an improvement in our civilization if we could stop letting our elected officials mis-identify problems and respond with irrelevant or destructive solutions.  But that would require a vigilant, informed polity, rather than the political cults that currently control our national political conversation.

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