The Democratic party is on a roll. The public wants the war to be over and Democrats want to end it for them. You’ve got to think it’s good news when the electorate wants what you want to give.
There has always been an appetite for pacifism on the left. Sometimes it was a guilty little secret pleasure to be ignored. Sometimes it has been an irresistible hunger. Today the Democrats are like a chocoholic being told that Mama’s Triple Fudge brownies are not only good for you, but you’re going to get paid to eat them.
Yup, it’s good times. They are going to let their anti-war side run wild and the public is going to love them for it.
…so why do Democrats look so scared?
The party leadership that was around during Vietnam remember what happened the last time they let loose into a full anti-war frenzy and for all the arguments about whether Iraq is another Vietnam, the political situation does have amazing similarities: An unpopular war with a large majority of the public wanting our troops to come home, an activist minority pushing the party to the left and party leaders in an “I’m more anti-war than you are” contest.
In the early 70’s Democrats heard the voice of the people and gave them what they wanted. They ended the war and expected the public would reward them. It made perfect sense, and it didn’t work.
In 1976 Jimmy Carter was able to win the White House thanks to the hangover from Watergate, but how many seats did Democrats pick up in the House and Senate? Zero. And just 4 years later Republicans had a landslide for President, a pickup of 35 seats in the House and control of the Senate for the first time since 1954.
Democrats were asking “What the [expletive deleted] went wrong?”
The problem was that they gave the public what they wanted, not what they needed. Americans don’t like seeing their neighbors get hurt, so their ‘want’ was for the war to stop, but after they got what they wanted they took a step back and realized that what the Country needed was to win. In short order, the American people decided that the Democrats could not be trusted with national security and it took the party a generation to repair the damage.
The same political dynamic is playing out in the nation today. The war has been longer and harder than the public expected and they want it to be over, so the Democrats are again yielding to their anti-war instincts and rushing to give the public what it wants.
If we succeed in Iraq the anti-war crowd will look foolish and the Democrats will suffer for it. If we fail in Iraq, just like the late 70’s the public will soon shift focus to the fact that they don’t like America loosing a war and will be looking for someone to blame. The country will again turn against the anti-war movement and the Democratic party will pay the price.
Democrats have ignored the lessons of history. They think they are flying high. That’s how falling off a cliff feels until you hit the ground.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
The Jobs Americans Won’t Do
The justification for the President’s temporary worker program is that there are some jobs that American’s just won’t do.
Farmers argue that they need unskilled immigrant workers because without them, crops will rot in the fields and food prices will skyrocket. In California’s San Joaquin Valley in 1960 under the Bracero guest worker program 56,000 unskilled Mexican farm workers picked 2 million tons of tomatoes. When that program ended in 1964, did crops rot in the fields? Did ketchup become a luxury good?
Of course not. Farm owners started to invest in automation. The result was that 5,000 high skilled, high wage workers were able to harvest 12 million tons of tomatoes. Nearly six times the harvest with one tenth of the workforce. Put another way, that’s a productivity increase of over 6,000%. If our health care system had that kind of productivity increase, we wouldn’t be worried about the future of Medicare.
It’s a perfectly understandable pattern. American industry has little incentive to invest in labor saving automation as long as there is an unlimited supply of low skilled, low wage workers.
But what about jobs that can’t be automated? If we don’t import cheap, unskilled immigrant labor, who is going to clean our hotel rooms?
If low wage immigrant workers were not available, Hilton would not close it’s hotels. They would respond to supply and demand in the labor market and pay a U.S. worker trying to support her 3 kids the $15/hour she needs to pay the mortgage and finish her education.
Low wage immigrant labor does not make these jobs possible. It just makes them possible at low wages.
The other argument for a temporary worker program is that if we give people a legal channel to work in the U.S., there will be less illegal immigration. It will reduce pressure on the Border Patrol and let them focus their resources on the few people still trying to cross the border illegally.
There’s just one problem with this argument. It’s called math.
A 2005 Pew Hispanic Center national survey showed that 46% of Mexicans would cross the border into the United States if they had the opportunity. Out of a population of 109 million, that makes 50 million Mexicans who with varying degrees of intensity, want to come here. Subtracting 400,000 legal guest workers, still leaves 49.6 million who want to come here and are willing do it illegally.
A guest worker program can only reduce illegal immigration if it absorbs a large fraction of the pool of potential illegal immigrants. Given that the population of Mexico, Central and South America is over half a billion, no temporary worker program can ever be large enough to put a meaningful dent in illegal immigration.
If the goal of a temporary worker program is to subsidize business with low wage workers, then it may have merit, but we need to be aware that there will be a price. That price will be reduced productivity and lower wages for U.S. workers.
Farmers argue that they need unskilled immigrant workers because without them, crops will rot in the fields and food prices will skyrocket. In California’s San Joaquin Valley in 1960 under the Bracero guest worker program 56,000 unskilled Mexican farm workers picked 2 million tons of tomatoes. When that program ended in 1964, did crops rot in the fields? Did ketchup become a luxury good?
Of course not. Farm owners started to invest in automation. The result was that 5,000 high skilled, high wage workers were able to harvest 12 million tons of tomatoes. Nearly six times the harvest with one tenth of the workforce. Put another way, that’s a productivity increase of over 6,000%. If our health care system had that kind of productivity increase, we wouldn’t be worried about the future of Medicare.
It’s a perfectly understandable pattern. American industry has little incentive to invest in labor saving automation as long as there is an unlimited supply of low skilled, low wage workers.
But what about jobs that can’t be automated? If we don’t import cheap, unskilled immigrant labor, who is going to clean our hotel rooms?
If low wage immigrant workers were not available, Hilton would not close it’s hotels. They would respond to supply and demand in the labor market and pay a U.S. worker trying to support her 3 kids the $15/hour she needs to pay the mortgage and finish her education.
Low wage immigrant labor does not make these jobs possible. It just makes them possible at low wages.
The other argument for a temporary worker program is that if we give people a legal channel to work in the U.S., there will be less illegal immigration. It will reduce pressure on the Border Patrol and let them focus their resources on the few people still trying to cross the border illegally.
There’s just one problem with this argument. It’s called math.
A 2005 Pew Hispanic Center national survey showed that 46% of Mexicans would cross the border into the United States if they had the opportunity. Out of a population of 109 million, that makes 50 million Mexicans who with varying degrees of intensity, want to come here. Subtracting 400,000 legal guest workers, still leaves 49.6 million who want to come here and are willing do it illegally.
A guest worker program can only reduce illegal immigration if it absorbs a large fraction of the pool of potential illegal immigrants. Given that the population of Mexico, Central and South America is over half a billion, no temporary worker program can ever be large enough to put a meaningful dent in illegal immigration.
If the goal of a temporary worker program is to subsidize business with low wage workers, then it may have merit, but we need to be aware that there will be a price. That price will be reduced productivity and lower wages for U.S. workers.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Law and Order starring …Rudy Giuliani?
So we have a new immigration bill. The left doesn’t like it, the right hates it, and the middle …well, they aren’t so hot about it either. And yet it seems destined to pass and become law. Since there is so much emotion around illegal immigration, it seems highly unlikely that this new bill will make the issue go away.
So after the legislation is passed, where does the debate go?
The biggest problem with the 1986 reform was that the “promise” of enforcement to prevent future illegal immigration in exchange for amnesty, wasn’t kept. Conservatives are desperate not to let that happen again, so we’re starting to hear rumblings about the next big fight. Enforcement.
Since the right has already been burned once, they are going to be obsessive about the enforcement provisions of the new law. They will be looking for the first microscopic hint of backsliding and when they find it, conservatives are going to scream bloody murder.
When the enforcement fight starts (about 9 seconds after the bill is signed), Republicans are going to be looking for a leader to save them from a repeat of 1986. There is going to be an opportunity for a major Republican presidential candidate to grab the issue and become that leader.
That’s where Rudy comes in. The only thing standing between him and the nomination is low support from the right wing of the party, so he would benefit from showing leadership on immigration enforcement more than any other candidate. He also has the most credibility in the party as being tough on crime. The biggest criticism of Giuliani as Mayor was that he was, if anything, too ruthless in enforcing the law.
If Giuliani positions himself as the tough as nails crime fighter who can enforce the law and shut down illegal immigration, the right wing of the party will line up behind him in a New York minute.
The only question is, will he see the opportunity and take it?
So after the legislation is passed, where does the debate go?
The biggest problem with the 1986 reform was that the “promise” of enforcement to prevent future illegal immigration in exchange for amnesty, wasn’t kept. Conservatives are desperate not to let that happen again, so we’re starting to hear rumblings about the next big fight. Enforcement.
Since the right has already been burned once, they are going to be obsessive about the enforcement provisions of the new law. They will be looking for the first microscopic hint of backsliding and when they find it, conservatives are going to scream bloody murder.
When the enforcement fight starts (about 9 seconds after the bill is signed), Republicans are going to be looking for a leader to save them from a repeat of 1986. There is going to be an opportunity for a major Republican presidential candidate to grab the issue and become that leader.
That’s where Rudy comes in. The only thing standing between him and the nomination is low support from the right wing of the party, so he would benefit from showing leadership on immigration enforcement more than any other candidate. He also has the most credibility in the party as being tough on crime. The biggest criticism of Giuliani as Mayor was that he was, if anything, too ruthless in enforcing the law.
If Giuliani positions himself as the tough as nails crime fighter who can enforce the law and shut down illegal immigration, the right wing of the party will line up behind him in a New York minute.
The only question is, will he see the opportunity and take it?
The Logic of Immigration
Immigration reform is an emotionally charged issue and the most contentious part is the decision about what to do with the 12+ million illegal immigrants already here. Should they be allowed to stay?
Sometimes examining the most extreme cases can help shed light on a difficult question, so let’s do that with the “path to citizenship”.
Case #1:
A 26 year old man came here illegally from Nicaragua 8 years ago. He speaks no English, has made no attempt to assimilate and has supported himself by leading a violent street gang that controls the drug trade in a large American city. He is personally responsible for half a dozen vicious murders.
Should he be given a path to citizenship? The obvious answer is no. Everyone would agree we should track him down, slap him in handcuffs and throw him out of the country.
Case#2:
A Mexican couple crosses the border illegally with their 6 month old son. He is put up for adoption and grows up not knowing he is in the country illegally. He speaks only English, graduates from Harvard with honors, then turns down a high paying corporate job to become a Marine Corps officer. While in combat, he is seriously wounded saving the lives of dozens of civilians and is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Should he be given a path to citizenship? Most Americans would insist that he be granted citizenship immediately. We are obviously a far better country having citizens like him.
Most illegal immigrants are neither mass murderers nor national heroes. They fall somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes, but the point is still valid. Some illegal immigrants are nearer the former case, are destructive to our country and should be expelled. Others are closer to the second example and are already valuable members of our American family.
If we accept this simple logic that we as a nation would be better off if some fraction of the illegal immigrant community were granted legal status and acknowledged as the good Americans they are, and some fraction were compelled, as best we can, to leave, then the only remaining question for our policy makers is: By what standards do we decide who should stay and who should go?
Sometimes examining the most extreme cases can help shed light on a difficult question, so let’s do that with the “path to citizenship”.
Case #1:
A 26 year old man came here illegally from Nicaragua 8 years ago. He speaks no English, has made no attempt to assimilate and has supported himself by leading a violent street gang that controls the drug trade in a large American city. He is personally responsible for half a dozen vicious murders.
Should he be given a path to citizenship? The obvious answer is no. Everyone would agree we should track him down, slap him in handcuffs and throw him out of the country.
Case#2:
A Mexican couple crosses the border illegally with their 6 month old son. He is put up for adoption and grows up not knowing he is in the country illegally. He speaks only English, graduates from Harvard with honors, then turns down a high paying corporate job to become a Marine Corps officer. While in combat, he is seriously wounded saving the lives of dozens of civilians and is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Should he be given a path to citizenship? Most Americans would insist that he be granted citizenship immediately. We are obviously a far better country having citizens like him.
Most illegal immigrants are neither mass murderers nor national heroes. They fall somewhere on a continuum between the two extremes, but the point is still valid. Some illegal immigrants are nearer the former case, are destructive to our country and should be expelled. Others are closer to the second example and are already valuable members of our American family.
If we accept this simple logic that we as a nation would be better off if some fraction of the illegal immigrant community were granted legal status and acknowledged as the good Americans they are, and some fraction were compelled, as best we can, to leave, then the only remaining question for our policy makers is: By what standards do we decide who should stay and who should go?
Sunday, December 24, 2006
This is Test Post #2, with no subject category. Test test test.
I am the dummy text that doesn't really mean anything. I am only here to demonstrate what this space would look like if there were real text here. I hope you enjoy this example text. I know I am happy that you are here. Are you enjoying it yet? I really hope you are. If you are, I will be very happy. I like being happy, it makes me happy. Happiness is a fuzzy kitten, or so I've heard.
I do like kittens. Quite a bit, actually. Especially fuzzy ones. They do lose a bit of their cuteness after you shave themdown to stubble. And then comes the chafing... no, I'd definitely stick with the fuzzy kittens. Do you like kittens?
Sometime soon I think I'll stop. Being sample text is not really as fulfilling as I'd hoped... maybe I will start a new career as text in a juicy tabloid! That seems like it would be exciting! Or a career in politics! I could be the text in some major treaty or something, and help to bring about world peace! But no.. I'd probably end up being the text on page 1,195 of some huge committee report that no one is ever going to read...
No, I think that a trashy gossip rag sounds much more fun. Look for me soon in your grocery checkout lane! Until then, goodbye.
I do like kittens. Quite a bit, actually. Especially fuzzy ones. They do lose a bit of their cuteness after you shave themdown to stubble. And then comes the chafing... no, I'd definitely stick with the fuzzy kittens. Do you like kittens?
Sometime soon I think I'll stop. Being sample text is not really as fulfilling as I'd hoped... maybe I will start a new career as text in a juicy tabloid! That seems like it would be exciting! Or a career in politics! I could be the text in some major treaty or something, and help to bring about world peace! But no.. I'd probably end up being the text on page 1,195 of some huge committee report that no one is ever going to read...
No, I think that a trashy gossip rag sounds much more fun. Look for me soon in your grocery checkout lane! Until then, goodbye.
Test Article
It’s easy to hate. All we need to do is find a group of people who are somehow different from us, and start hating them for it. It is nothing to be ashamed of; every human has been doing it since the beginning of humanity.
However, we have run into problems in these modern times as there is a lack of people to hate. Oh sure, we’ve had a good time of it with most of the various minority groups, but it doesn’t take long before they stand up and point out that they’re not playing anymore (and in fact, had stopped playing quite some time ago). We are now left with a gap in our schedule which we could have happily filled with hatred. So the question is: who should we start hating now? We need a group of people that won’t stand up for themselves, and who won’t "educate" us, showing how fundamentally "similar" we all are. We need a group of people that don’t speak our language, or, if they do, then they should be pathetically bad at it. We need a group of people who look so different from us, that we can’t form any kind of identification between us and them. It would appear that we have squandered our supply of peoples to whom we can be prejudice against. That is, all but one group... Babies.
Who do babies think they are? They just hang around the house all day, having people wait on them hand and foot. And you know, none of them have jobs. And what about the vomit? They don’t even try to get to a bucket in time. No, they will just spew-up wherever they are at that moment – on the carpet, in their dinner, over themselves – in clear defiance of proper social conduct. And don’t even get me started on the other half of their digestive cycle. They listen to their Barney albums ‘till all hours of the.. afternoon. And what about their faces? Don’t they know they look like walnuts? Huh? Don’t they? And let me tell you, they are all illiterate.
There are places for babies, and they’re called NURSERIES. If they can just stay in there then I’ll be happy.
The sad truth is, one day babies too, shall probably rise-up and tell us to stop screwing around and pull our act together. We are fast running out of people to hate, and this is why I am throwing my full support behind SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Damn those space-monkeys, who do they think they are...
However, we have run into problems in these modern times as there is a lack of people to hate. Oh sure, we’ve had a good time of it with most of the various minority groups, but it doesn’t take long before they stand up and point out that they’re not playing anymore (and in fact, had stopped playing quite some time ago). We are now left with a gap in our schedule which we could have happily filled with hatred. So the question is: who should we start hating now? We need a group of people that won’t stand up for themselves, and who won’t "educate" us, showing how fundamentally "similar" we all are. We need a group of people that don’t speak our language, or, if they do, then they should be pathetically bad at it. We need a group of people who look so different from us, that we can’t form any kind of identification between us and them. It would appear that we have squandered our supply of peoples to whom we can be prejudice against. That is, all but one group... Babies.
Who do babies think they are? They just hang around the house all day, having people wait on them hand and foot. And you know, none of them have jobs. And what about the vomit? They don’t even try to get to a bucket in time. No, they will just spew-up wherever they are at that moment – on the carpet, in their dinner, over themselves – in clear defiance of proper social conduct. And don’t even get me started on the other half of their digestive cycle. They listen to their Barney albums ‘till all hours of the.. afternoon. And what about their faces? Don’t they know they look like walnuts? Huh? Don’t they? And let me tell you, they are all illiterate.
There are places for babies, and they’re called NURSERIES. If they can just stay in there then I’ll be happy.
The sad truth is, one day babies too, shall probably rise-up and tell us to stop screwing around and pull our act together. We are fast running out of people to hate, and this is why I am throwing my full support behind SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Damn those space-monkeys, who do they think they are...
Saturday, October 9, 2004
Who Is The Enemy?
It has been said that the war in Iraq is a diversion from the real war on terror. Al-Qaeda attacked us on 9/11, Saddam did not. The war is a mistake.
After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war. He asked war to be declared on Japan and also on Nazi Germany. Why? Germany did not attack us. Germany was not involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt asked us to go to war against Nazi Germany because he knew that our enemy was not just the Emperor of Japan. It was not just the Generals that plotted that one attack. He knew that the enemy was an ideology of hatred; an ideology of hatred of which the attack on Pearl Harbor was just one expression. He knew that America would not be safe until that ideology of hatred had been defeated everywhere it was found.
On September 11th, we were attacked by a new enemy based in a new ideology of hatred. An ideology from a different part of the world, speaking different languages, but dreaming the same fascist dream. An ideology willing to do anything, kill anyone in any numbers, anywhere to impose their twisted vision upon the world. Like 60 years ago, the American people and the people of the world will not be safe until this ideology of hatred is defeated wherever it is found.
Some will say that the comparison is wrong. Iraq is not Nazi Germany.
Torture chambers…secret police dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night never to be heard from again…mass graves filled with uncounted tens of thousands of men, women, children. With due respect to those who opposed the war, we have seen all this before. While it is true that Saddam and his henchmen did not equal the numbers of victims we saw in Europe decades ago, he did equal their cruelty and it would have continued. The mass graves would have continued to fill year after year, thousands upon thousands of new victims, if we had not acted.
Early in the second world war, it was believed that Germany was near to producing the worlds first atomic bomb and as a result, America poured unprecedented manpower and resources into the Manhattan project. After the war, we discovered that they were never close. That fact did not make fighting Germany a “diversion” from the war against Japan.
Our fathers and grandfathers fought and sacrificed to defeat fascism, to leave to their children and grandchildren a freer, safer world. Now is our time to repay that debt. It is up to this generation to fight the ideology of hatred. It is our choice with courage and sacrifice, to defeat it and leave to our children and grandchildren a freer, safer world, or retreat and leave to future generations a world too dark to imagine.
After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war. He asked war to be declared on Japan and also on Nazi Germany. Why? Germany did not attack us. Germany was not involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt asked us to go to war against Nazi Germany because he knew that our enemy was not just the Emperor of Japan. It was not just the Generals that plotted that one attack. He knew that the enemy was an ideology of hatred; an ideology of hatred of which the attack on Pearl Harbor was just one expression. He knew that America would not be safe until that ideology of hatred had been defeated everywhere it was found.
On September 11th, we were attacked by a new enemy based in a new ideology of hatred. An ideology from a different part of the world, speaking different languages, but dreaming the same fascist dream. An ideology willing to do anything, kill anyone in any numbers, anywhere to impose their twisted vision upon the world. Like 60 years ago, the American people and the people of the world will not be safe until this ideology of hatred is defeated wherever it is found.
Some will say that the comparison is wrong. Iraq is not Nazi Germany.
Torture chambers…secret police dragging people from their homes in the middle of the night never to be heard from again…mass graves filled with uncounted tens of thousands of men, women, children. With due respect to those who opposed the war, we have seen all this before. While it is true that Saddam and his henchmen did not equal the numbers of victims we saw in Europe decades ago, he did equal their cruelty and it would have continued. The mass graves would have continued to fill year after year, thousands upon thousands of new victims, if we had not acted.
Early in the second world war, it was believed that Germany was near to producing the worlds first atomic bomb and as a result, America poured unprecedented manpower and resources into the Manhattan project. After the war, we discovered that they were never close. That fact did not make fighting Germany a “diversion” from the war against Japan.
Our fathers and grandfathers fought and sacrificed to defeat fascism, to leave to their children and grandchildren a freer, safer world. Now is our time to repay that debt. It is up to this generation to fight the ideology of hatred. It is our choice with courage and sacrifice, to defeat it and leave to our children and grandchildren a freer, safer world, or retreat and leave to future generations a world too dark to imagine.
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