I really thought it was dead a couple of weeks ago. I was wrong.
While all the cameras were on Paris, our Senators voted 64-35 today to move ahead with the amnesty bill. This despite Rasmussen poll numbers from June 13th that say only 23% of Americans like the Senate bill. And despite record input from constituents, overwhelmingly against the bill.
But the Senators know best, I suppose. We just don’t understand things as well as they do.
Now they proceed with a maximum 24 amendments, 30 hours of cloture-regulated debate, and the clay pigeon analysis of the minutia.
It isn’t a done deal but it is quite likely they can push it through if they don’t fight too much over the details.
Then, next up is the House. They’ll have to form a compromise committee and haggle over the details.
Here are a few details of the Rasmussen poll:
President’s job approval rating: 33%
Reid’s job approval rating: 19%
McCain for President (Republicans): 11%
What the public wants (according to Rasmussen):
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters would favor an approach that focuses “exclusively on securing the border and reducing illegal immigration.”
Fifty-seven percent (57%) favor a proposal giving “all illegal aliens up to three years to leave the United States. After leaving, the illegal aliens would have to get in line and wait their turn for legal entry into the United States.”
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The 25% Solution
In case you missed it, there was an analysis of the impact of the Senate immigration bill done by the Congressional Budget Office. It was a quick and dirty look started on May 24th and published on June 4th. (Just so you know, the law requires a report on all Congressional bills out of committee. It certainly wasn’t published in the interest of transparency.)
“CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the legislation would exert a relatively small net effect on the federal budget balance over the next two decades, since additional expenditures would be mostly offset by additional revenue.”
(from page 1 of the report)
I love the terms “relatively small” and “mostly offset”.
But the kicker is their assessment of the effectiveness of the enforcement part of the bill. Here’s what they say on page 26:
“Effects of Enforcement and Verification on Net Flow of Unauthorized Migrants.
The potential impact of the border security, employment verification, and other enforcement measures on the flow of unauthorized migrants is uncertain but could be large. While efforts to restrain the influx of unauthorized workers and their families have historically been relatively ineffective, this legislation would authorize significant additional resources as well as a comprehensive employment verification system to deter the hiring of unauthorized workers. Moreover, the implementation of the new guest worker program and the provision of visas to the currently unauthorized population could occur only if the Secretary of DHS certifies that the enforcement measures are in place.
CBO estimates that those measures would reduce the net annual flow of unauthorized immigrants by one-quarter. A reduction of that order of magnitude would reduce the unauthorized population in the United States by about 1.3 million in 2017.”
So what does a 25% reduction in flow really mean? Well, those who trust the Pew Report would say the number of illegals entering our country under this plan would be 300,000 each year, instead of 400,000.
If you go with the Bear Sterns analysis, the number drops from 3 million annually to 2,250,000.
Either way, Congress is not proposing to STOP the flow of illegals, only reduce it by 25%. And the report has the nerve to call the impact “large”. One would think we could do better than that. With details like this coming to light, no wonder they want to stop debate and pass the bill quickly! What a sham.
Here’s all 44 pages of the report:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/81xx/doc8179/SA1150_June4.pdf
“CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that the legislation would exert a relatively small net effect on the federal budget balance over the next two decades, since additional expenditures would be mostly offset by additional revenue.”
(from page 1 of the report)
I love the terms “relatively small” and “mostly offset”.
But the kicker is their assessment of the effectiveness of the enforcement part of the bill. Here’s what they say on page 26:
“Effects of Enforcement and Verification on Net Flow of Unauthorized Migrants.
The potential impact of the border security, employment verification, and other enforcement measures on the flow of unauthorized migrants is uncertain but could be large. While efforts to restrain the influx of unauthorized workers and their families have historically been relatively ineffective, this legislation would authorize significant additional resources as well as a comprehensive employment verification system to deter the hiring of unauthorized workers. Moreover, the implementation of the new guest worker program and the provision of visas to the currently unauthorized population could occur only if the Secretary of DHS certifies that the enforcement measures are in place.
CBO estimates that those measures would reduce the net annual flow of unauthorized immigrants by one-quarter. A reduction of that order of magnitude would reduce the unauthorized population in the United States by about 1.3 million in 2017.”
So what does a 25% reduction in flow really mean? Well, those who trust the Pew Report would say the number of illegals entering our country under this plan would be 300,000 each year, instead of 400,000.
If you go with the Bear Sterns analysis, the number drops from 3 million annually to 2,250,000.
Either way, Congress is not proposing to STOP the flow of illegals, only reduce it by 25%. And the report has the nerve to call the impact “large”. One would think we could do better than that. With details like this coming to light, no wonder they want to stop debate and pass the bill quickly! What a sham.
Here’s all 44 pages of the report:
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/81xx/doc8179/SA1150_June4.pdf
Monday, June 25, 2007
Clay pigeons
Cartoon by Lisa Benson I had no idea what they were talking about, so I did a little reading. A “clay pigeon” is a procedural tactic sometimes used by Congress to circumvent legitimate debate.
By now you know about cloture. In essence, you get 60 Senators to vote for it, which puts a 30 hour deadline on debating the bill. I suppose cloture makes sense if you are talking about limiting debate over a bridge in Montana, but not when you are discussing sweeping immigration reform that was never subject to public hearings or even committee work.
So…this clay pigeon technique involves the absurd extreme of analyzing the minutest detail of every amendment, and voting on each little piece; sort of like turning off the shot clock and watching Senators pass the ball back and forth until the final buzzer.
Like a clay pigeon, you explode the amendment into little bits and examine each piece ad nauseum. An alternative is to give the senators milk and graham crackers and have them all take a little nap.
It’s funny that the line item veto is unconstitutional but this little congressional trick isn’t.
Friday, June 22, 2007
On Iraq
This site isn’t about the war in Iraq, but it is about Bush. And his actions on immigration spill over into other areas. So I asked myself how I feel about Iraq, and I offer these insights.
First, Saddam needed to go. His sins are many and we are all second-guessing the decision now, but five years have dimmed the original problem. He ruled ruthlessly. He had used gas to kill the Kurds. He was thumbing his nose at UN inspectors, despite all warnings. He was a friend to terrorists. He celebrated in the streets on 9/11. And most of all, he stood up to us in 1990 and lived to tell about it, giving him some status as a hero in the middle east.
Second, Saudi Arabia was weakening as an ally. We needed a presence in the middle east, and Iraq is centrally located.
Third, perhaps democracy, coupled with oil revenue, was possible somewhere in the desert. Maybe Iraq was that somewhere.
Let me say that the morning the twin towers collapsed my first thought was that air travel was going to be a disaster in the future. My second thought was that I was glad Gore wasn’t in the White House. I took great comfort in knowing that Bush had Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Ashcroft. It was nice to know that he could call George, Sr. for advice. Bush may have been a “C” student, but he was surrounded by veterans.
Below are some interesting quotes from Schwarzkopf’s biography about the futility the idea of invading Iraq. The context is a discussion about why Stormin’ Norman was ordered to stop at Basra, rather than continue on and destroy Saddam and the Republican Guard:
“He understood the thinking behind the hands-off approach: concern over the United States getting enmeshed in what could only be a highly risky, probably fruitless, attempt to resolve the age-old internal conflicts of Iraq; and skepticism over the possibility of identifying any coherent opposition force to put in Saddam’s place.
“There was also the fear of a “Lebanonization” of Iraq, which might leave a Shiite entity in the south and a Kurdish enclave in the north. It was one thing to have proceeded with the war; it was another to reopen it with murky political objectives, no UN mandate, and a great deal of regional uneasiness.” In the Eye of the Storm, 1991, pg 328
Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1992 and this is what he had to say about Iraq at the time:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home..."
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
We sometimes forget that Iraq is not an ancient geographical creation. It was a rather arbitrary map drawn by the British after WWI. It has no unified culture (Now there’s an immigration point to be made!).
But our point of view from the early 1990’s cannot compare to with the post-9/11 world. Things are different. There was justifiable pressure to make a show of force in the middle east. It would have been nice to surgically attack bin Laden, but that isn’t possible. So we attacked one of his friends; a man that needed to go anyway. The Clinton approach would have been to lodge a protest at the UN and talk of embargo, another impossibility.
My personal criticism about the war has more to do with execution than raison d’ eter. We made some big mistakes:
1) We debated it in Congress for six months before we began.
2) We over-used the shock and awe technique, thus destroying too much infrastructure and angering the citizenry.
3) We have waged a soft war for too long, rather than fighting to win.
4) We failed to decide to be an occupying force.
5) If they can’t handle democracy at this time, what is our plan?
6) We’ve lost the confidence of people like Colin Powell.
7) We have failed to win the battle with the embedded reporters and ex-Generals on CNN.
I think the cause is a worthy one. I think it can be won. I think our troops are doing a great job. I think they need leadership.
First, Saddam needed to go. His sins are many and we are all second-guessing the decision now, but five years have dimmed the original problem. He ruled ruthlessly. He had used gas to kill the Kurds. He was thumbing his nose at UN inspectors, despite all warnings. He was a friend to terrorists. He celebrated in the streets on 9/11. And most of all, he stood up to us in 1990 and lived to tell about it, giving him some status as a hero in the middle east.
Second, Saudi Arabia was weakening as an ally. We needed a presence in the middle east, and Iraq is centrally located.
Third, perhaps democracy, coupled with oil revenue, was possible somewhere in the desert. Maybe Iraq was that somewhere.
Let me say that the morning the twin towers collapsed my first thought was that air travel was going to be a disaster in the future. My second thought was that I was glad Gore wasn’t in the White House. I took great comfort in knowing that Bush had Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell and Ashcroft. It was nice to know that he could call George, Sr. for advice. Bush may have been a “C” student, but he was surrounded by veterans.
Below are some interesting quotes from Schwarzkopf’s biography about the futility the idea of invading Iraq. The context is a discussion about why Stormin’ Norman was ordered to stop at Basra, rather than continue on and destroy Saddam and the Republican Guard:
“He understood the thinking behind the hands-off approach: concern over the United States getting enmeshed in what could only be a highly risky, probably fruitless, attempt to resolve the age-old internal conflicts of Iraq; and skepticism over the possibility of identifying any coherent opposition force to put in Saddam’s place.
“There was also the fear of a “Lebanonization” of Iraq, which might leave a Shiite entity in the south and a Kurdish enclave in the north. It was one thing to have proceeded with the war; it was another to reopen it with murky political objectives, no UN mandate, and a great deal of regional uneasiness.” In the Eye of the Storm, 1991, pg 328
Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1992 and this is what he had to say about Iraq at the time:
"I would guess if we had gone in there, I would still have forces in Baghdad today. We'd be running the country. We would not have been able to get everybody out and bring everybody home..."
"And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam (Hussein) worth? And the answer is not that damned many. So, I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."
We sometimes forget that Iraq is not an ancient geographical creation. It was a rather arbitrary map drawn by the British after WWI. It has no unified culture (Now there’s an immigration point to be made!).
But our point of view from the early 1990’s cannot compare to with the post-9/11 world. Things are different. There was justifiable pressure to make a show of force in the middle east. It would have been nice to surgically attack bin Laden, but that isn’t possible. So we attacked one of his friends; a man that needed to go anyway. The Clinton approach would have been to lodge a protest at the UN and talk of embargo, another impossibility.
My personal criticism about the war has more to do with execution than raison d’ eter. We made some big mistakes:
1) We debated it in Congress for six months before we began.
2) We over-used the shock and awe technique, thus destroying too much infrastructure and angering the citizenry.
3) We have waged a soft war for too long, rather than fighting to win.
4) We failed to decide to be an occupying force.
5) If they can’t handle democracy at this time, what is our plan?
6) We’ve lost the confidence of people like Colin Powell.
7) We have failed to win the battle with the embedded reporters and ex-Generals on CNN.
I think the cause is a worthy one. I think it can be won. I think our troops are doing a great job. I think they need leadership.
Meet Frances Semler
Frances is 73 years old and known about town in Kansas City MO as being involved in the community. Being visible, she was recommended by Mayor Funkhouser to serve on the Park Board. In fact, the mayor reorganized the entire board at the same time, leaving only one member from the previous administration.
One blogger says Frances has “the fashion sense of a librarian”, not what you’d call an intimidating figure. All was well with her appointment; she was even voted in by the city council.
Then it was discovered that Frances is also a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. She was reasonably active in the group, but obviously not a headline grabber since the mayor and city council didn’t connect her to the group until after she was voted in.
Well, it just won’t do to have a Minuteman on the Park Board. That’s just plain wrong.
Beth Gottstein, a member of the city council said: “This is one step from the KKK (Ku Klux Klan). My world is totally rocked by this. We fight this every day. I am grieving for my friends in the Hispanic community.”
Rita Valenciano, the president of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations in Kansas City said: “It’s like a member of the Ku Klux Klan” …“I definitely think it disqualifies her.” (Her brain waves must have melded with Gottstein’s. Eerie, isn’t it?)
Cris Medina of the Guadalupe Center said “What? Oh, my God. The community will be very upset.”
At first the mayor told her to “hang in there” when Semler offered to resign. But he’s had second thoughts. It’s a good thing because the city council passed this resolution on June 14th. The vote wasn’t even close. Two abstained, two voted no, and NINE voted to remove her:
“WHEREAS, the appointment of Commissioner Frances Semler will likely be a divisive force in our community rendering the work of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners suspect in many quarters; NOW, THEREFORE,
“BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF KANSAS CITY:
“Section 1. That the Council respectfully requests Parks and Recreation Commissioner Frances Semler recognize the potential for community distrust of the work of the Board with her involvement as a Commissioner, and respectfully requests her resignation from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.
“Section 2. That if Parks and Recreation Commissioner Frances Semler does not resign within one week of the passage of this resolution, that the Mayor, in accordance with section 1001(b) of the City Charter is requested to recommend to the Council the removal of Commissioner Semler from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.”
I guess I can never serve in an official capacity now. But what about Mayor Alan Mansour in Costa Mesa, California? And he was re-elected last year. Hmmmmm.
One blogger says Frances has “the fashion sense of a librarian”, not what you’d call an intimidating figure. All was well with her appointment; she was even voted in by the city council.
Then it was discovered that Frances is also a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. She was reasonably active in the group, but obviously not a headline grabber since the mayor and city council didn’t connect her to the group until after she was voted in.
Well, it just won’t do to have a Minuteman on the Park Board. That’s just plain wrong.
Beth Gottstein, a member of the city council said: “This is one step from the KKK (Ku Klux Klan). My world is totally rocked by this. We fight this every day. I am grieving for my friends in the Hispanic community.”
Rita Valenciano, the president of the Coalition of Hispanic Organizations in Kansas City said: “It’s like a member of the Ku Klux Klan” …“I definitely think it disqualifies her.” (Her brain waves must have melded with Gottstein’s. Eerie, isn’t it?)
Cris Medina of the Guadalupe Center said “What? Oh, my God. The community will be very upset.”
At first the mayor told her to “hang in there” when Semler offered to resign. But he’s had second thoughts. It’s a good thing because the city council passed this resolution on June 14th. The vote wasn’t even close. Two abstained, two voted no, and NINE voted to remove her:
“WHEREAS, the appointment of Commissioner Frances Semler will likely be a divisive force in our community rendering the work of the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners suspect in many quarters; NOW, THEREFORE,
“BE IT RESOLVED BY THE COUNCIL OF KANSAS CITY:
“Section 1. That the Council respectfully requests Parks and Recreation Commissioner Frances Semler recognize the potential for community distrust of the work of the Board with her involvement as a Commissioner, and respectfully requests her resignation from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.
“Section 2. That if Parks and Recreation Commissioner Frances Semler does not resign within one week of the passage of this resolution, that the Mayor, in accordance with section 1001(b) of the City Charter is requested to recommend to the Council the removal of Commissioner Semler from the Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners.”
I guess I can never serve in an official capacity now. But what about Mayor Alan Mansour in Costa Mesa, California? And he was re-elected last year. Hmmmmm.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Victims
It seems to me that our society is filled with victims. We seem to define ourselves as being wronged by this person or that group. I think part of the problem is our upbringing. We have been raised on praise.
Since Spock (Benjamin, not the Vulcan with deformed ears) our parents and teachers have sheltered our self-esteem at all costs. Earlier generations would have been met with, “Johnny, your problem is that you are lazy. You’d better get busy or you’ll fail this class.”
Now, Johnny gets stickers that read, “Good effort” and everyone worries that he has ADD or is gifted and therefore bored or perhaps is abused at home or needs a school breakfast or…… anything but unmotivated to take responsibility for his work.
And it’s no surprise that Johnny lets us make excuses for him.
The immigration problem is no exception. Since they don’t have the law in their favor, illegals seek sympathy in a number of ways. And it makes good copy, especially for the more liberal media outlets.
Here’s a sample of the victim role, always neglecting the underlying facts in the matter:
Mariana, age 23, is graduating from UCLA. Harvard has accepted her for an MA program in education. But she fears deportation and even getting a job because she is here illegally. But she turns to society for the answers; not her parents that brought her here illegally.
Tony, age 38, is separated from his wife and son. They were deported back to Poland three weeks ago, but Tony, a legal resident, stayed behind. All three are very sad and lonely. Poles are not granted asylum anymore because Poland is not a hostile nation. So, Janina agreed in 1995 to leave voluntarily, but she didn’t leave. Instead she stayed, gave birth to her son, and was later caught. Now, by law, she is barred from returning for at least 10 years. And Uncle Sam is the heavy, she is the victim.
Kunal, age 13, hoped to win the National Spelling Bee so he could draw attention to the deportation of his parents last year. You see, we don’t grant asylum to people from India.
The 2007 Springville Utah Folkfest has been cancelled. It seems that many of the foreign performing groups are unable to get visas because they are expensive and harder to get. Apparently some performers in the past have come here and overstayed their visas. Again, Uncle Sam is the bad guy.
Dreams Across America is a program to gather Catholic victims from around the country, put them on a train, and parade them around Washington, DC. None of these teenagers want to leave America. They like it here. Their parents brought them here for a better life. None of them denies that they are breaking the law. The demonstration was planned by the Catholic Church.
It’s funny they don’t have stories like this about all those people waiting for years on the other side of the border. Are they not victims?
Since Spock (Benjamin, not the Vulcan with deformed ears) our parents and teachers have sheltered our self-esteem at all costs. Earlier generations would have been met with, “Johnny, your problem is that you are lazy. You’d better get busy or you’ll fail this class.”
Now, Johnny gets stickers that read, “Good effort” and everyone worries that he has ADD or is gifted and therefore bored or perhaps is abused at home or needs a school breakfast or…… anything but unmotivated to take responsibility for his work.
And it’s no surprise that Johnny lets us make excuses for him.
The immigration problem is no exception. Since they don’t have the law in their favor, illegals seek sympathy in a number of ways. And it makes good copy, especially for the more liberal media outlets.
Here’s a sample of the victim role, always neglecting the underlying facts in the matter:
Mariana, age 23, is graduating from UCLA. Harvard has accepted her for an MA program in education. But she fears deportation and even getting a job because she is here illegally. But she turns to society for the answers; not her parents that brought her here illegally.
Tony, age 38, is separated from his wife and son. They were deported back to Poland three weeks ago, but Tony, a legal resident, stayed behind. All three are very sad and lonely. Poles are not granted asylum anymore because Poland is not a hostile nation. So, Janina agreed in 1995 to leave voluntarily, but she didn’t leave. Instead she stayed, gave birth to her son, and was later caught. Now, by law, she is barred from returning for at least 10 years. And Uncle Sam is the heavy, she is the victim.
Kunal, age 13, hoped to win the National Spelling Bee so he could draw attention to the deportation of his parents last year. You see, we don’t grant asylum to people from India.
The 2007 Springville Utah Folkfest has been cancelled. It seems that many of the foreign performing groups are unable to get visas because they are expensive and harder to get. Apparently some performers in the past have come here and overstayed their visas. Again, Uncle Sam is the bad guy.
Dreams Across America is a program to gather Catholic victims from around the country, put them on a train, and parade them around Washington, DC. None of these teenagers want to leave America. They like it here. Their parents brought them here for a better life. None of them denies that they are breaking the law. The demonstration was planned by the Catholic Church.
It’s funny they don’t have stories like this about all those people waiting for years on the other side of the border. Are they not victims?
A fish on the line
This has nothing to do with aliens, but it really struck me. There was an article in our local paper on Sunday, reprinted from Newsweek magazine about an alarming discovery that sentinel fish are mutating because of contaminated water. (At least the scientists are saying so.)
They are now able to measure trace amounts of substances due to improved technology. We filter out the contaminants but traces remain and they theorize that the problem is deforming the fish.
The species of fish is, I kid you not, the common white sucker!
They are now able to measure trace amounts of substances due to improved technology. We filter out the contaminants but traces remain and they theorize that the problem is deforming the fish.
The species of fish is, I kid you not, the common white sucker!
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