Borders, Immigration, and Crime

One thing common to both illegal immigration and illegal drugs is that our total lack of realistic governmental policies has resulted in the growth of criminal activity along our border by gangs who would have otherwise remained petty thieves.

Drug smugglers, having perfected the art of transporting illegal substances across our border, are nor transporting people across the border. "Coyotes", having perfected the art of smuggling people across the border are now taking on higher profit drug shipments. In short, our demand for both illegal immigrant labor and illegal recreational substances has again created a rich "Mafia", not unlike what happened during Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920's.

The very people who gain most from our porous borders are not the illegal immigrants who simply want to feed their families and are not the people who consume the recreational substances imported by the smugglers. Instead, the criminal gangs, businessmen (of dubious ethics), and government bureaucrats (on both sides of the border) are the people who gain most from the porous border. According to the Daily Mail, it costs from $4,000-$10,000 to move one illegal immigrant to the USA.   It is no coincidence we hear meaningless drivel coming out our political leaders saying that the voice of the people is wrong. They claim that Arizona is racist. But if it is, why are 30+ percent of Hispanics living in that state supporting a law which puts them at greatest risk of being profiled and hassled by the law? Yes, one can make the racism argument based on the percentage of Whites supporting this law. Yet, when the law has significant support among minorities, it means something else is at play - and must be understood.

As I am more familiar with the costs of educating a child, I'll use some slightly dated statistics to illustrate my points. Let's say that it costs $10k to educate a child in a high cost state such as New York. Special education (ESOL - English for speakers of other languages, Handicapped education, etc.) may double that price for affected students. What happens to a state that is burdened with educating large numbers of illegal immigrant children? Well, a rough breakdown for educational funding is - Local Government: 45%, State Government: 45% and Federal Government: 10%. In the mainstream class in which I student taught, 25% of the class required ESOL assistance. That's a lot more than 10% of the costs for the 20 kids in the class. Is the Federal government properly compensating the school systems for the added burden of educating these children? No!!! So who gets suck with the bill? The state and local tax payer. Is this fair? No!!!! The above noted situation is quite common in areas with large numbers of illegal immigrants - and the states are being crushed by the under funded mandates imposed by Uncle Sam....

But what should we do about this?  The problem is not just illegal immigration, but it is a vicious circle of problems related to drug crime, people in need of jobs, and people on both sides of the border profiting from illegal trade. First, we must defang the drug cartels - legalize the controlled substances, tax them, and destroy the profit margin that makes it possible to ply their trades. Next, we need to slow down the rate of immigration of low skilled labor. I propose making Mexico a buffer zone, where these immigrants would be required to attend certified English language training schools before coming to the USA. All immigrants would be required to demonstrate a rudimentary knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon tongue before being allowed into the USA. But this would not be enough - they would have to bid for the right to come to the USA - market based visas. Instead of the money going to the Coyotes (and associated criminal enterprises), it would go to the US Government instead. And finally, all of this money gained from market based visas would need to be distributed to the states providing services for these immigrants.

Of course, there are political concerns. I'd want for the immigrants coming to the USA using these visas to be ineligible for US citizenship. They would have the protection of American law, but not affect American politics, as they could not vote. This would blunt the impact of immigration for at least one generation - probably enough to eliminate the fears from the states most affected by immigration.....

Please note that this is only an incomplete starting point for a thought experiment. We need better solutions than we have now, and our government is ill equipped to provide them without meaningful public participation in political debates.

Another year over, and a new one just begun.

As usual, no one knows what will happen at the beginning of the New Year. But we do know that the old year brought a lot of change. And this year was no different. There were many changes, and yet, the world remained much the same as it has always been - an orb where over 7 billion people repeatedly fight to make it through another day of life.

The New York Times Sunday Magazine has put out its usual memorial issue, where they commemorate the lives of those who have passed. And we are reminded of what we have lost, not knowing what we will gain in the years to come. There are many great people we have lost, some famous, and some who are not. But all have a commonality to them - they have made an impact on our lives.

We have seen the development of new enemies, as well as the neutralization of old ones. Who'd have thought that ISIS would be a major concern a couple of years ago? Who'd have thought that North Korea would attempt to threaten Americans if they watched a mediocre film that cast their leader as the focal point of bad humor? Who'd have thought that the USA would be working with Iran, and deescalating years of tension between the countries? And who'd have thought that the United States and Cuba would be normalizing political relations with each other?

Much of the news was controversial - not only because of its content, but for what it meant about the people being reported on. In the case of the Senate Report on Torture, we found that the CIA made a cascading series of moral mistakes after being charged with gaining information from GITMO prisoners, and then did whatever was in their political power to cover up their actions. Yes, the report was going to be political in nature - could anything coming out of Washington, DC not be political?  What saddens me most is that many Americans are so happy to use torture as a tool, forgetting that even our captives deserve to be treated as humans. in accordance with treaties signed by the United States.

But who could have foreseen the Pope chastising the Roman Curia? Of all 2014's events, this one seems the most amazing, as religious leaders have not sparked as much change as this Pope seems to have done. Without changing a letter of dogma, he has changed the focus of the message. Instead of rigid obedience and conformity, it is now one of forgiveness, tolerance and hope.

As they say, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." And this has been true about 2014. Hopefully, we'll see 2015 show more of the good side of humanity than 2014 did....

Even Eric Cartman couldn't cause this much trouble

I'm disgusted!  An all but acknowledgement of state sponsored terrorism, and no way to deal with the criminals behind it. (And if there is a plan, our government is not talking about it.)

We have just seen our 1st amendment trumped by a terrorist threat to bomb movie theaters that show "The Interview" - a film about two people being recruited to assassinate the leader of North Korea. Sony's computers have been hacked, theater chains refuse to show the picture, and the public denied the right to see a movie previously scheduled to open on Christmas day. Even worse, when theaters decided to show "Team America, World Police" instead, Sony shot down their chances of showing this film as well.

I never thought we'd see our freedoms at risk this way - Americans are running scared because of a threat from some unnamed hackers. North Korea is a basket case of a country, and one that will eventually collapse if both China and the West stop bailing it out. Sadly, there are problems with this. The South Koreans can't afford to rescue the North, the Chinese don't want a reunification that puts a strong American ally on its borders, Russia has a veto in every possible situation, and the Americans have every reason to wait things out. So North Korea continues to exist, blackmailing the major players in the region for what the dictatorship needs to survive.

But what would happen if we looked at this situation as an opportunity?

There is an old saying: "They shoot horses, don't they?" And maybe this is how the Americans, Chinese and Russians should think about North Korea.  What would happen if all possible opposition were neutralized in the North, and the three major powers were to create a consortium for the extraction of rare earth minerals - raping the land (something already being done) for their profit, instead of that of the Kim regime?

Yes, I am talking about the destruction of a nation for profit. But I doubt that anything could save the North Korean people - at least not at the prices that any of the stake holders are willing to pay. But please remember that I pose this "modest proposal" only as a thought experiment, and one meant to change how people are thinking of the problem posed by North Korea.  There are millions of lives at stake. And eventually, someone will have to address their needs when North Korea self destructs....

A long needed thaw - something I never thought I'd see....

This is what most Caribbean nations dependent on tourism feared - the United States and Cuba gradually warming up to each other. There are so many things which should be binding the two nations together, but for bad politics (on both sides) and an assassinated American President that got in the way of common sense.

One person told me that addiction is similar to having to choose between opening two doors. The first door will allow you to exit the room. The second door will have you beaten up by a gorilla. The addicted person keeps repeatedly choosing the second door, while the non-addict will quickly choose the first door and leave the room. When the addict is asked why he keeps choosing the same door, the addict will respond with something to the effect - well, it can eventually change, can't it?

Our policy towards Cuba has been very much like that of the person who keeps opening up the wrong door - the Castro regime has not been ousted, and it has become even more entrenched over the years. Many people want to punish Cuba for its actions of 53 years ago, but most people alive today weren't alive when the embargo was put in place. What good does punishing a country do when the people being punished are not responsible for the problem. This punishment seems to be a misguided approach to keeping the first generation of Cuban exiles happy and voting according to their current patterns.

Most people don't know that it is perfectly legal for Americans to visit North Korea, a country more troublesome to American interests, and spend money there. Yet, in a country that has not been shown to sponsor terrorism (save, in the figments of collective Washington, DC political imagination), it is effectively illegal for Americans to be there. Something is very wrong - and it likely has to do with American political paralysis.

There are issues that will need to be negotiated before a full thaw has occurred. And they have nothing to do with promoting democracy in Cuba. Instead, they will have to do with trademarks and the exports of certain goods. For example, Bacardi Rum got its start in Cuba. The family took the brand along with them when they left Cuba, and established it in Puerto Rico. Do you think they can afford to have the Cubans sell rum under the Bacardi name after the embargo is lifted? Another example is Cohiba cigars. The brand available in the USA is made in the Dominican Republic, while the brand available in most of the world is made in Cuba. How will this get resolved?

If anyone brings up the idea that Cuba stole property from its rightful owners, it should be noted that Russia and China have done the same thing, and that the United States has relationships with these countries. In fact, one might find the history of Smirnoff Vodka interesting, as the trademark left Russia - and when Russians resurrected it in their own right, a "peaceful" settlement was reached. This makes me comfortable with the idea that both the United States and Cuba will resolve issues like this to their mutual satisfaction.

Obama, like him or hate him, is a person who plays the long game. The game with Cuba will play out long after Obama is out of the game. It will take time to negotiate and resolve the issues that have arisen over the 53+ years that we have had an embargo. And the negotiations have only just begun....

Questions arising from the report on the CIA Enhanced Interrogation program

The recent release of the Senate report on the activities of the CIA in the wake of 9-11 is very disturbing. But I'm disturbed for reasons tangentially related to the document itself - that people will excuse violations of law and human decency in the pursuit of vengeance and political cover.

It's been over 13 years since the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. Many people were in extreme fear, as mainland America had never suffered a terrorist attack of this scale, nor had it been in the front line of any major wars since 1865. I remember my downstairs neighbor having a sticker on his car announcing "Lake Afghanistan" - as if the way to eliminate our fears was to bomb this country off the face of the earth. Even I was caught up in this fear - and lost sight of what my core values were and should have been.

Shortly after the attacks, the CIA was charged with gathering information which the government could act on. And as the report shows, they were ramping up a mass scale intelligence gathering program without much knowledge of how to do so. In short, they were flying by the seats of their pants.

In most technology fields, we deal with a three legged stool: Cheap, Bug Free, On-Time - pick any two. We have to make trade offs to deliver products with an acceptable balance of these three factors. In intelligence gathering, they have another three legged stool: Quick Information, Large Amounts of Information, and Accurate Information. Torture can produce a lot of information quickly, but the quality leaves much to be desired - as both Israelis and Egyptians would tell you. Skilled interrogation (as used by the Israelis and other governments) produces a lot of accurate information, but it takes time. In short, there is a trade off that has to be made in intelligence gathering.

What I find interesting about the executive summary of the report just published is that we have learned how many records were preserved by the CIA, save the videotapes of the "enhanced interrogations." This is reminiscent of the detailed records kept by a major Central European power in the 1930's and 1940's. The key difference here, is that in the USA, our CIA acted to hide information from both elected branches of government. In fact, one of the documents mention that if Colin Powell (then Secretary of State) hears about this, he'd be livid. Even worse, the CIA kept information from the then President himself!  Only the Senate and House intelligence committees had knowledge of the activities in question.

Ronald Reagan's signing statement on the ratification of the UN Convention on Torture states:

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.” 

Therefore, waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation activities" are likely to be considered torture by the treaties we've signed.  Where is the outrage that our House and Senate oversight committees looked the other way while our laws were being violated? Are we a government of law, or that of expediency? This is a very important question.

Shortly after the executive summary of the Senate report was issued, I had a conversation with a gentleman I see regularly. And he parroted the view of the Republican rebuttal, as well as saying that this report should never be made public. He feels that whatever we do to others can be justified in the name of protecting Americans - even if it means breaking laws, then covering up the lawbreaking. I feel that we are a nation of laws, and sometimes it means that we suffer so that the powers of government are kept in check.

The big questions here that bother me very much are: Can we afford to allow a government act illegally, and then cover things up in the name of protecting Americans? Where is the point where allowing a government to act illegally harms Americans more than protects them? I have serious concerns in regard to religious obedience to law, as I know that some problems can not be resolved within the rule of law. On the other hand, how much freedom can we afford to give a government agency which seems to have gone rogue in the performance of its duty? I only wish I had good answers....

Obamacare / ACA

I'm torn between the idea of surrendering more liberties to the central government, and the idea that freeloaders in the healthcare marketplace are responsible for the price distortions that help make healthcare unaffordable to 20% of our population. In many other countries, they see healthcare as a right. (I'm not saying whether it should be a right.) The idea that all citizens deserve high quality healthcare as a matter of right indicates that those countries value social cohesion more than individual freedom compared with the USA. In Canada, it is one area of government which treats both rich and poor the same way - a tool for putting the rich in the same boat as the less privileged.  America may have something to learn from its Northern neighbor - if it is lucky enough to learn some humility.

With that being said, one of the signs of a good law is that people on both sides of the aisle are unhappy with the law. In the case of ACA/Obamacare, the left said we didn't go far enough towards a single payer system. Where the right said we went way too far in telling individuals that they must participate in a specific market place. Using this criteria, ACA/Obamacare has the potential of being considered a great move forward if it survives the test of time. So, what do we make of Thursday's decision? If we ignore the rhetoric from both sides, we can see the ideas behind the law from a historical perspective. Most of the ideas behind ACA/Obamacare were developed by the GOP from the days of Richard Nixon. Romney implemented the model for ACA/Obamacare in Massachusetts when he was governor. Most people in that state are very glad the law exists. The odds are, that as people become familiar with the benefits of ACA/Obamacare, they will grow to like it. But if they don't, they will be free to throw it out - especially with a GOP in ascendency across the nation. 

Before the ruling, I was telling people NOT to make any assumptions in regard to how SCOTUS would rule. This ruling neither legitimizes nor delegitimizes the authority of the court. It simply is an exercise of the power of that court as a co-equal branch of government. I had a feeling that a conservative court would be very hard pressed to overturn a president's major legislative effort when both sides of the argument said that government had the power to pass ACA/Obamacare into law based on the government's taxation powers. That ended up being the salient point that Justice Roberts focused on, and his way of saying that he will evaluate cases first based on his interpretation of the merits of a case (with the bias of a conservative justice), and not the politics behind it.

I'm still wondering if the GOP wins, whether they will fulfill their promises to repeal Obamacare / ACA.  If they do, they'd better have something better with which to replace this law, or we'll be in trouble.  This would be the first time that the political system not just cuts off its nose to spite its face, but it will show the political system as not caring one bit about the American pledge to help people in need....  We're starting to see America's social cohesion decay.  And once we lost it, we'll be no better than most other countries on this globe....

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

It's a damned shame that reason doesn't play a bigger part of political life.

As much as I call myself a centrist, I've gotten disgusted at the GOP. America has long needed a means to provide adequate healthcare access for the 20% of our citizens who do not get subsidized access from either the corporate world or the government. And when the Federal government has used a model enacted by a Republican governor, that same (now) ex-governor is repudiating support of what should be his greatest achievement. When asked about how the (not by choice) uninsured would get health insurance, he issued a polemic about being responsible.....

A big problem with America's health care "system" is that the uninsured are guaranteed treatment regardless of ability to pay once they reach most hospitals. This does not jive well with a supposedly market based system advocated by the GOP, because of the cost shifting that inevitably takes place. One either has to turn away people who can't pay for care, or recognize that health care is too important an issue to be left to market based solutions. Some might say - there's enough charity care to go around. That's not the case. Hospitals also negotiate deals with insurance companies which call for the lowest possible rates being charged to their covered beneficiaries. If 80-90% of the public is covered by HMOs or other insurance structures, that leaves the remaining 10% or people to cover the uninsured via excessive rates for services provided by a hospital. This is not right....

When people are polled - do they support "Obamacare"? most say NO. But, when you ask the same people about the individual provisions of the same law (without mentioning it is "Obamacare"), the same people support most of the individual provisions. So what does this mean? To me, these people are siding with their "tribe", accepting the lies being told by cynical leaders. Yet, there is some truth to the criticisms of the law - the most important being that this is only the second law in American history which compels a person to participate in the purchase of a good. (The first was enacted in early American Constitutional times, requiring all citizens to purchase a firearm and ammunition for purposed of establishing a well regulated militia. This is a law I could support even now, with some minor exceptions.) Do we want to require people to buy a good they don't want?

Sadly, what existed before 2010 was worse than nothing. When one has hundreds of people waiting on line for free health care (provided pro bono) at health care clinics because they can't afford it otherwise, we have serious problems. This is not a third world country. But we're treating a growing segment of our population as if we were in the third world. Obama's law does not socialize medicine, as many in the GOP claim. In fact, one of my friends keeps spouting the GOP party line that we'll lose our right to choose our own doctors if this law is allowed to continue. Has anyone experienced this? I haven't so far..... But I'm afraid that if the law is repealed by the courts, that some future administration will force in single payer insurance and truly socialize healthcare in this country - a very possible situation which may be forced by a desperate public.

In short, there is an underlying tension between individual rights, society's rights to insure that there are no freeloaders for social benefits, and our basic human nature to help people in need. How should we best answer this challenge? Should we let politics continue to get in the way of finding an optimal solution which reflects the medical and social needs of America?