Obama Kills the Health Care Bill

[lawrocket 3]

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You're right, they founders didn't forsee the need to create a welfare state. That's why they didn't. They felt it more necessary to restrict the power of the federal government. Look up the tenth amemdment, the one that gets trampled on most.

There is truth to this. 100 years ago, the idea that the federal government could move in on what the states are doing was laughable. Then someone said, "let's forget the estavlished history and precedent. Let us conclufe that everything anybody ever does at any time affects interstate commercew if everybody was to do the same thing."

It started with drugs. Literally. Then it moved on to the Progressives and Populists, who found that estavlished rules and precedent sucked. Hey, at least they amended the Constitution to create the income tax and also (I think foolishly) made senators elected the same way as Representatives.

But the perversion of the commerce clause made this all possible. The threat to stack the SCOTUS made it complete.

So now we"ve got a federal government that has a national debt that is 20% of the world's money supply.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[nerdgirl 0]

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You're right, they founders didn't forsee the need to create a welfare state. That's why they didn't. They felt it more necessary to restrict the power of the federal government. Look up the tenth amemdment, the one that gets trampled on most.

There is truth to this. 100 years ago, the idea that the federal government could move in on what the states are doing was laughable. Then someone said, "let's forget the estavlished history and precedent. Let us conclufe that everything anybody ever does at any time affects interstate commercew if everybody was to do the same thing."

And if one goes back even further than the late 1800s to the time of the founding of the Republic, one observes that only *one* part of the Executive branch had direct and explicit limits placed on funding: the Army. Article 1, Section 8:

“To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.”

That’s the only thing that the Constitutionalists were concerned enough about to place limits. Everything else was left for Congress and future generations. Does that mean they expected more or less? Arguments seem to largely depend on whether one approves or disapproves of the recipients.

Why did the Founding Fathers limit appropriations to 2 years for armies? It would interesting (to me at least) to explore how historically radical the idea of a standing, professional *federal* Army was at the time (as opposed to the English tradition of universal military obligation for all able-bodied free men at the will of the King or Queen). The standing army was the threat perceived in that day to civil liberties/citizens’ liberties not that they were the defenders of freedom, as is today. And the 2nd Amendment was needed to protect citizens from the standing army, largely seen as an agent of the government.

The Framers were also concerned with regard to what the States (via their elected/appointed representatives) would approve, so limits on armies were explicitly included. Why was the Army limited to 2-year money? A commitment from the States – who resisted/feared strong centralized govt, a la England and who had their own “well-regulated militias” – to support a standing *federal* Army (as opposed to the civilian volunteer force of the Revolutionary Army) must have been radical!

Pragmatically, in the late 1700s having an ocean between you and the likely source of threat by other armies was a dang good defense. Not so much today.

It strikes me as a poignant example of fundamental change in what Americans expect and see in government, i.e., an evolution.

In Federalist Paper No. 29, Alexander Hamilton writes as critic of those who would replace or supplant the local and State militias with a standing federal army:

“There is something so far-fetched and so extravagant in the idea of danger to liberty from the [State and local] militia, that one is at a loss whether to treat it with gravity or with raillery; whether to consider it as a mere trial of skill, like the paradoxes of rhetoricians; as a disingenuous artifice to instil prejudices at any price; or as the serious offspring of political fanaticism.

“Where in the name of common-sense, are our fears to end if we may not trust our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens? What shadow of danger can there be from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits and interests? What reasonable cause of apprehension can be inferred from a power in the Union to prescribe regulations for the militia, and to command its services when necessary, while the particular States are to have the sole and exclusive appointment of officers? [when was the last time that an officer in the federal military, Title 10 forces, was appointed or promoted by a State government? – nerdgirl] If it were possible seriously to indulge a jealousy of the militia upon any conceivable establishment under the federal government, the circumstance of the officers being in the appointment of the States ought at once to extinguish it.”

I suspect that very few of the folks who today argue most strongly for “original intent” arguments are going to argue for need to restrict or abolish the professional Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps [TankBuster?]. Instead, it’s folks like [TomAeillo] and [jcd11235] who have argued for smaller militaries, albeit probably on different basis. Otoh, I’ve argued for argued for increasing DoD budgets.

As was noted earlier in the thread by [GeorgiaDon]: Jenner hadn’t ‘invented’ the smallpox vaccine when the Constitution was signed. (General Washington did use cowpox variolation to inoculate troops against smallpox.) I highly doubt that the Framers of the Constitution would likely have imagined all that “health care” means in the early 21st Century (or the associated expenses). Similarly, the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say anything about telephony or electronic communication; it has, however, been interpreted to have governance over those areas and other that have evolved. The concept of universal public education was radically liberal offshoot of the Enlightenment. The Framers, however, were brilliant men who recognized change happens and who crafted a document that could adapt to serve a world more than 200 years later.

/Marg … & thanks for the small impetus to re-read one of the Federalist papers.

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[nerdgirl 0]

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The constitution we have now compels the Federal government to promote (or "provide for") the general welfare

The writers understood that promoting the general welfare of the nation was best accomplished by not restricting the rights of the individual.

I'm curious: do you make that argument on a historical basis?

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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You must be so proud.

I am proud of this country. Proud enough to have become a citizen, by my own choice, about a year ago.

Please don't get the idea that I am completely happy about the current state of affairs in this country. All I have been arguing is that the "pursuit of happiness" is a lot easier if we all pool a small fraction of our resources towards attaining common goals. For example, most people (but judging from SC not all) recognize that we all benefit from a more competitive, vigorous economy that results when the country has an educated work force, and so we pay our taxes to support public education (with a good deal of whining to be sure). Some would say that public education is not in the Constitution, so children should be limited in their education by their parent's ability to pay for private schooling. Of course we did that for many years, indeed up until Reconstruction in the South, with the result that skilled professional jobs were pretty much restricted to the wealthy class. I can't think of a present-day first world market economy that functions with a >50% illiteracy rate, which was the situation we had in this country up until the introduction of public education. In addition public safety is related to education; the social metric that correlates most strongly with crime rates (comparing community to community) is the school drop-out rate, especially in or before 10th grade [I can't find a link right now, but it makes sense if you think about it.] So you can save some of your $$ by eliminating taxpayer-funded schools if you like, but at the cost of 1) having a much harder time finding literate workers to employ in your business, and 2) having to devote more time/money to guarding your stuff. There are many societies around the world where the price of success is having to live behind barbed wire and walls, and when you do venture out you have to worry about being kidnapped and held for ransom. Those tend to be societies where everyone is on their own, and there is little or no sense of "community". Like it or not, the connection between things is not always simple, and more $$ in your pocket does not always mean you are more free to do the things you may want to do.

Again, that's not to say that I agree with everything the Government has spent money on. For example I am appalled at the waste of money and lives spent pursuing military adventurism. I am very nervous about the gamble that the "economic stimulus" will generate enough revenue to pay for itself over any reasonable time frame. On the other hand, doing nothing would have been a big gamble too, as a prolonged recession or depression could reduce tax revenues to the point where, after mandatory payments on the existing debt, not enough would have been left to cover necessary functions including the military. Of course, some would be very happy with that outcome too.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[marks2065 0]

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You must be so proud.

I am proud of this country. Proud enough to have become a citizen, by my own choice, about a year ago.

Please don't get the idea that I am completely happy about the current state of affairs in this country. All I have been arguing is that the "pursuit of happiness" is a lot easier if

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we all pool a small fraction of our resources towards attaining common goals.

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what percentage would you consider being a small fraction? 40% 50% 60%?

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[lawrocket 3]

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And if one goes back even further than the late 1800s to the time of the founding of the Republic, one observes that only *one* part of the Executive branch had direct and explicit limits placed on funding: the Army. Article 1, Section 8:
“To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.”
That’s the only thing that the Constitutionalists were concerned enough about to place limits. Everything else was left for Congress and future generations. Does that mean they expected more or less? Arguments seem to largely depend on whether one approves or disapproves of the recipients.

Why did the Founding Fathers limit appropriations to 2 years for armies? It would interesting (to me at least) to explore how historically radical the idea of a standing, professional *federal* Army was at the time (as opposed to the English tradition of universal military obligation for all able-bodied free men at the will of the King or Queen). The standing army was the threat perceived in that day to civil liberties/citizens’ liberties not that they were the defenders of freedom, as is today. And the 2nd Amendment was needed to protect citizens from the standing army, largely seen as an agent of the government.

I don't think it's coincidental that the appropriation be re-examined in every new Congress. This meant that the standing army could be re-examined when trampling on rights. I believe that Cato wrote that there was issue of whether the posse comatatis (okay, maybe I didn't spell it right) with a standing army.

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I suspect that very few of the folks who today argue most strongly for “original intent” arguments are going to argue for need to restrict or abolish the professional Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps [TankBuster?]. Instead, it’s folks like [TomAeillo] and [jcd11235] who have argued for smaller militaries, albeit probably on different basis. Otoh, I’ve argued for argued for increasing DoD budgets.

The professional military has created a defense, which has shown its need. Nevertheless, there still is the National guard and federal, state and local police that supplant the prior need for standing armies enforcing federal laws.

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As was noted earlier in the thread by [GeorgiaDon]: Jenner hadn’t ‘invented’ the smallpox vaccine when the Constitution was signed. (General Washington did use cowpox variolation to inoculate troops against smallpox.) I highly doubt that the Framers of the Constitution would likely have imagined all that “health care” means in the early 21st Century (or the associated expenses). Similarly, the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say anything about telephony or electronic communication; it has, however, been interpreted to have governance over those areas and other that have evolved. The concept of universal public education was radically liberal offshoot of the Enlightenment. The Framers, however, were brilliant men who recognized change happens and who crafted a document that could adapt to serve a world more than 200 years later.

Yes. The constitution is like a manual for the core operations of government. When new technologies arise, it is up to find where they best fit. When there are new ideas that were not considered or allowed, like the income tax, there is a system to change it.

It has operated and served us well all these years. How does pornography appear in the constitution? It appears in ideas of speech, patents, commerce, etc. And all of these pieces work together to allow us ot formulate conclusions.

By th way - I am not a proponent of going to "intent" in the Constitution unless the provision is ambiguous. And even then with great caution.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[mnealtx 0]

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All I have been arguing is that the "pursuit of happiness" is a lot easier if we all pool a small fraction of our resources towards attaining common goals.

Here's an idea - instead of spreading around money, how about spreading around some friggin work ethic??

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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Here's an idea - instead of spreading around money, how about spreading around some friggin work ethic??

No problem at all with encouraging a strong work ethic. I work 60-70 hrs/wk at my "real" job, and another 20+ running a small farm. Getting an education is also hard work, and a more appropriate job for young people that picking cotton is, even if their parents don't happen to have the money to send them to a for-profit private school. It may be a better investment (for society), in the long run, to help people with access to medical care so they can get healthy enough to work, instead of favoring a situation that results in a treatable sickness becoming a chronic condition that leaves the patient unable to work. None of that has anything to do with the healthy adult who just prefers to sit around and suck from the public teat, but especially after the welfare reforms passed in the Clinton administration, I believe those people are a small (but infuriating) fraction of the population.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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what percentage would you consider being a small fraction? 40% 50% 60%?

Well since I, like everyone else, do not enjoy paying taxes, I would prefer something south of 40%. Having come here from Canada, and having lived in Europe, I also appreciate that Americans are taxed less than anyone else in the developed world, but in general they do not enjoy a better standard of living despite that. As a general principle, I am happy to pay taxes that go towards providing services that I (and pretty much everyone else) need, and that would cost more if I had to go out and buy those services privately. I, and the rest of the country, need some degree of protection from countries that would come and take our resources if we were undefended, so I pay taxes to support the military as it would be prohibitively expensive for me to hire, train, and equip an effective private army. On the other hand, I think the military has become far larger than what we need for defense, which is expensive in its own right and also encourages very expensive military adventurism, and I dislike paying for that. Others obviously disagree. I happily pay taxes, and a little more for products, to have reasonable confidence that the food I eat, the water I drink, the prescription drugs I need to treat sickness, aren't going to kill or disable me. It would be prohibitively expensive, indeed completely unworkable, to have to pay for lab testing of every steak before I could eat it, and having my estate sue the producer after I am dead of food poisoning doesn't do me any good. It's cheaper to pay for food inspectors to enforce safety regulations, and it doesn't bother me in the least that those regulations may restrict the freedom of producers to carry on their business in whatever way they deem most profitable. I don't mind supporting public education, partly for moral reasons but also because I recognize that I receive multiple benefits including my own past education, a crime rate that is lower that it otherwise would be, a stronger economy that generates more overall wealth than would be the case, and access to better professional services (doctors, lawyers, etc) than would be the case if only children of rich families could be prepared to study for those professions. I don't mind paying for facilities to treat the mentally ill, as that is preferable to having to worry about being stabbed nearly to death by a paranoid schizophrenic while shopping for groceries, as recently happened to a friend of my wife. Unlike some who post here, I also recognize that there are things that "cost" me, just not directly in $$, and to some extent I am happy to pay to avoid those costs. It does not cost me money, and it doesn't affect me directly, when I read in the news about children being harmed or even killed in abusive home situations, but it causes me distress so I agree to pay for child protective services. Some would say just don't read the news, ignore it, it's not my problem. I say there is a cost to be paid for ignoring such problems, even if that cost is "just" a general coarsening and indifference to human suffering.

What are those things worth to you?

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[marks2065 0]

i feel the tax rate should be under 30% and with the money I keep I will take care of myself. those that choose to waste their money will get what they spent it on, but that is a personal choice and should stay that way.

[wmw999 2,452]

Another articulate well thought out post.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[kallend 2,027]

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i feel the tax rate should be under 30% and with the money I keep I will take care of myself. those that choose to waste their money will get what they spent it on, but that is a personal choice and should stay that way.

So which of the items in Don's list would you eliminate?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rehmwa 2]

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Another articulate well thought out post.

Wendy P.

yes, but paragraphs would be nice

I appreciate the listing of the 'essentials' since we pay for a hell of lot more than that list. minimizing government should start with a prioritized list of services (military, etc), and then the list should be cut at the point where no one has to pay a huge percentage of their income. Anything below that line is cancelled.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[rehmwa 2]

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i feel the tax rate should be under 30% and with the money I keep I will take care of myself. those that choose to waste their money will get what they spent it on, but that is a personal choice and should stay that way.

So which of the items in Don's list would you eliminate?

why not start with what's paid for that's not on his list first?

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[marks2065 0]

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i feel the tax rate should be under 30% and with the money I keep I will take care of myself. those that choose to waste their money will get what they spent it on, but that is a personal choice and should stay that way.

So which of the items in Don's list would you eliminate?

well lets see, how about anyone collecting money that isn't a citizen. that includes medical, social security, welfare, on dissability, or even the ones in jail. send them home let their country pay for them.

Then we could go to the czars and their payroll, and don't forget about the billions sent over seas to countries that vote against us in the UN. (if they don't like our way of life why should they share in its benefits?)

I think I just saved us a trillion dollars or more, that should be a good start.

[wmw999 2,452]

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well lets see, how about anyone collecting money that isn't a citizen. that includes medical, social security, welfare, on dissability, or even the ones in jail. send them home let their country pay for them.

If they are here legally, why. If they are here illegally, most of those programs already have exclusions against illegal aliens.

The first thing the welfare or food stamp worker does is to check citizenship if there is doubt (at least that was the case when I was a food stamp worker). And I actually LOOKED at the green card. It had to be a green card (permanent resident), not some work or student visa.

Yes, you could do more enforcement. However, if the cost of enforcement ends up exceeding the cost saved, is it worth it?

I'm not saying it's perfect. But saying that every single last one should be ferreted out is unrealistic. Really.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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yes, but paragraphs would be nice

I'll try harder.

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I appreciate the listing of the 'essentials' since we pay for a hell of lot more than that list. minimizing government should start with a prioritized list of services (military, etc), and then the list should be cut at the point where no one has to pay a huge percentage of their income. Anything below that line is cancelled.

Well, the list wasn't meant to be comprehensive, just to give some examples. You probably don't want the whole list, I'd need chapters not paragraphs.

I do think that everything the government pays for should be justifiable, ideally in terms of a benefit received that exceeds the cost to purchase that benefit privately. Of course, if we were to list every government "service" or "benefit", for each one there would be people who would think it is essential, and others who think it totally crap. People who never fly may feel that they derive no personal benefit from air traffic control, so why should they pay for it? Then there are the cases where people do derive a real benefit, but it is indirect or kind of "behind the curtain" so they may not recognize it. Funding for basic medical research through the National Institutes of Health, or public health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are examples of these. There would certainly be a lot of disagreement about where to draw the line.

I think it would be an interesting exercise to have every government agency listed on the income tax form, with an explanation of what they do and what benefit they provide (and maybe even an explanation of how they are justifiable under the Constitution), and then people could "vote" by allocating their tax dollars to the agencies they want to support. Sort of an open competition between agencies for their share of the tax base. Of course, because the real world is not simple, people would have to be able to read and understand text longer than a Twitter message or a bumper sticker, so the concept probably wouldn't work, but it would be an interesting exercise. I suspect NIH would do quite well, ATF not so much.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[marks2065 0]

The first thing the welfare or food stamp worker does is to check citizenship if there is doubt (at least that was the case when I was a food stamp worker). And I actually LOOKED at the green card. It had to be a green card (permanent resident), not some work or student visa.

Yes, you could do more enforcement. However, if the cost of enforcement ends up exceeding the cost saved, is it worth it?

I'm not saying it's perfect. But saying that every single last one should be ferreted out is unrealistic. Really.

Wendy P.

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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All the illegals in jail...would be a good start.

So how would that work, really? Someone here illegally commits a crime, and we just send them back where they came from? Do we bother with the time and expense of a trial, if we're just going to send them back at the end of the day? Isn't not trying and imprisoning criminals creating an open invitation to criminals around the world to come here and ply their trade? If we do put them on trial and sentence them, and then send them home, we have no way to force other sovereign nations to enforce our laws. It sucks to be sure, but if they commit the crime here, we have to deal with them here.

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All the illegals ... in the emergency rooms...

I asked this in another thread, and at the risk of being redundant I'll ask you the same question:

Can you offer a suggestion of how exactly this can be accomplished in practice? The only legal proof of US citizenship generally available to people, and not easily forged, is a passport. Should people have to show a passport to obtain emergency room treatment? A birth certificate is easily faked, at least as easily as is a social security card and illegals have those by the truckload. Your suggestion has emotional appeal, I'll give it that, but I guess I'm not smart enough to see how to implement it so you'll have to explain it to me, in enough detail so I can understand how it will work without at the same time keeping legitimate American citizens, legal permanent residents, legal foreign nationals such as tourists and non-resident visa holders, etc from obtaining necessary emergency treatment.

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[marks2065 0]

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All the illegals ... in the emergency rooms...

I asked this in another thread, and at the risk of being redundant I'll ask you the same question:

Can you offer a suggestion of how exactly this can be accomplished in practice? The only legal proof of US citizenship generally available to people, and not easily forged, is a passport. Should people have to show a passport to obtain emergency room treatment? A birth certificate is easily faked, at least as easily as is a social security card and illegals have those by the truckload. Your suggestion has emotional appeal, I'll give it that, but I guess I'm not smart enough to see how to implement it so you'll have to explain it to me, in enough detail so I can understand how it will work without at the same time keeping legitimate American citizens, legal permanent residents, legal foreign nationals such as tourists and non-resident visa holders, etc from obtaining necessary emergency treatment.

Don

[redlegphi 0]

To add on to the great points GeorgiaDon has already made, I will just point out that if we'd really like to get an epidemic started in this country, the best way to do it is get millions of people currently living here to be afraid to go to a hospital for fear they'll be deported.

[wmw999 2,452]

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if we'd really like to get an epidemic started in this country, the best way to do it is get millions of people currently living here to be afraid to go to a hospital for fear they'll be deported.

But if it's only the illegals who won't go and get sick, then all us legals would be fine

Illegal immigration is a problem. Most problems are best prevented, and not cured. Putting a big fucking fence at the border with lots of armed guards is a cure, and a damned expensive one. And unless it's really, really expensive, it's probably not going to work real well, either, because a person-sized hole is not very big. Do we really, really want to have an infrastructure like East Germany's with the wall and guards and everything?

But as long as we Americans like things cheap, we're going to have work done for us by people who are scared to ask for more money.

People in Central America have less hope and fewer prospects if they stay home than if they come to the US. The better cure isn't to make the US less attractive; that can only go partway. By making home (i.e. Mexico, Honduras, etc) more financially attractive more people will stay there. And since illegal immigration is a bigger problem to the US than it is to Mexico, I think it behooves us to help them fix our problem.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[redlegphi 0]

So you're saying that instead of building towers with machine guns with motion-sensors on them that could shoot pregnant Mexican teenagers as they tried to cross the border, we should take that money and actually help improve Mexico?
What kind of sick liberal fascio-socio-communist are you?!?

[GeorgiaDon 362]

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Illegal immigration is a problem. Most problems are best prevented, and not cured. Putting a big fucking fence at the border with lots of armed guards is a cure, and a damned expensive one. And unless it's really, really expensive, it's probably not going to work real well, either, because a person-sized hole is not very big. Do we really, really want to have an infrastructure like East Germany's with the wall and guards and everything?

But as long as we Americans like things cheap, we're going to have work done for us by people who are scared to ask for more money.

People in Central America have less hope and fewer prospects if they stay home than if they come to the US. The better cure isn't to make the US less attractive; that can only go partway. By making home (i.e. Mexico, Honduras, etc) more financially attractive more people will stay there. And since illegal immigration is a bigger problem to the US than it is to Mexico, I think it behooves us to help them fix our problem.

+1!!!

Just to add on a bit, when people say "illegal immigration is a problem" (and I agree it is) they seem to think mainly in terms of stopping the "immigration" part. Why not address the "illegal" part? People come to this country because of the opportunity for jobs which, while mostly low-skill and low-paying from an American perspective, are very attractive compared to what is available back home, as Wendy said. But, why do they come here illegally? To a large extent, it is because it is either impossible or prohibitively expensive for them to do so legally.

I came to the US (from Canada) legally, became a permanent resident as soon as it was possible for me to do so, and started the process to become a citizen again pretty much as soon as I was eligible. Over the years I have paid tens of thousands of $$ just in fees for visas, green card applications, and naturalization applications for myself and my family. I have spent years at a time where I was unable to leave the country to go home to visit family, while this or that application was being processed. I and my family have sometimes been treated well, and sometimes like shit, by immigration officials. At the end of the day it was all worth it because I have a great career that pays a respectable (not extravagant) salary. I was able to get into the country because I have an education and "skills" that filled a perceived need, which is to say there is a list of "needed professions" and what I do happened to be on that list.

Contrast that to the situation of the typical "illegal immigrant". There is no visa program that says "welcome to America" if all you have to offer is a strong back and a willingness to work long hours in the hot sun. There are a few slots for temporary "agricultural workers" that greatly limit how long they can stay (months only) and for whom/where they can work. Also if you are working for minimum wage or less, thousands of $$ in fees is a big chunk of your annual income. How many of us can pony up 25% or more of our income just to pay for the privilege of being able to work? There are many disadvantages of being illegal in this country, living in hiding and in fear of being caught and deported is just the start of it. I'm confident most would not choose that route if there was a viable legal alternative.

If we as Americans really want cheap food, yard work, and the rest, we should create an economically realistic way for people in those low-wage low-skill jobs to come here legally.

If we don't want that type of immigration, we should be prepared to pay more for our "stuff". We should also stop with the predatory policies that cripple Latin American and other economies. For example, because of our subsidies to corn farmers, and our export subsidies, Mexican food manufacturers (the big companies, more than the Mom-and Pop operations) find American corn is cheaper than it can be produced locally. As a result, tens of thousands of Mexican farmers who once made an acceptable living at home have been displaced, and many have come here, illegally, because they have to support their families somehow. Ironic, isn't it?

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[TankBuster 0]

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Do we really, really want to have an infrastructure like East Germany's with the wall and guards and everything?

Uh, dearest, that wall was built to keep the peeps IN, not out.

The forecast is mostly sunny with occasional beer.