Illegal immigrants working in the state are not the problem from an economics standpoint. If they are engaging in voluntary transactions here, they are making our state better off by definition. They can only push prices down and make businesses more competitive. The real illegal immigration problem is all the handouts they receive from the state. Free education, free medical care, food stamps, welfare, etc. these are what will bankrupt us and why illegal immigration needs to be controlled, or preferably the handouts cut off to deter the behavior. We all know that deporting them all is logistically impossible.

Yeah, Dan, and slavery was working pretty good for our economy as well, until that damned freedom thing got in the way.

Business owners need to stop hiring illegals and the illegals will stop coming here. Blame the illegals all you want, but if I were "there" and the money was "here" I'd find a way to leave "there" and get "here."

E-verify works.

E-Verify tabled on a voice vote. Done for 2010.

Michael, what does slavery have to do with e-verify? Or with my statement about trade and voluntary transactions helping our economy? I don't understand your comment at all.

It's a loose analogy. Bring the illegals in, pay them, but less than what you can actually live on then complain that you, or we through taxation have to support them. Business owners profit from the cheap labor, pass a fraction of those savings to the consumer, unemployment is over 10% because "Americans won't do those jobs," teenagers don't learn work ethic from washing dishes or picking potatoes, the middle class rides further down the road to slavery with every passing second.

I know it's a stretch but your comment just didn't sit right.

Unemployment is over 10% because of massive amounts of malinvestment in the economy, not illegal immigration.

I suppose you want protectionist tariffs put into place to prevent our goods from being competed with as well? This is just bad economics. Cheap labor is a very good thing for everybody, but not if they are taking more than the wealth they are creating for us through health care, food, welfare, and education costs, which they are.

Brief off-topic:
Michael, from a firefighter/EMT perspective, what do you think about the content in this video, which was posted by some free-staters in New Hampshire over the weekend. It looks like a silly overreaction by local government to me, but I'm not an expert on fire control. Genuinely interested in hearing your thoughts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FgzRULJPo&

>If they are engaging in voluntary transactions here, they are making our state better off by definition

I guess paying folks under the table, which means in general that neither the employer or the employee are paying taxes, is a good thing in the eyes of Dan. Problem is, without taxes, Dan would not have a job.

Corporatists like Dan enjoy downward pressure on wages, so everyone makes less and the wealth all goes where it should- to the very top!

They certainly should have passed this initiative - it's basic common sense. Perhaps they should exempt very small businesses...just because it adds hassle and cost and is not likely to be too fruitful anyway.

"as soon as the bill came up, Senator Connors moved to recommit it to committee; i.e., to effectively kill it for the year"

Is anyone interested in helping up here? I've been involved in the last three campaigns to unseat Senator Connors and we're getting closer, but not enough to get over the top. We lost by 3 pts last time in a huge wave of anti-Republicanism.

If you really want to help make a difference in the state and affect change in the same vein as Montalbano and Alves previously, please come and help. If you want to help on the campaign in any way, please contact me at patricklaverty@gmail.com and I can put you in touch.

I'm not giving the name of the candidate yet as I don't think she has formally announced yet and want to leave that to her.

Thanks!

I wonder how Stuart the Pest can possibly argue that I am a corporatist when I do not support the idea of corporate person-hood in the first place, it being an artificial construct of government that distorts the market, perverts meaningful rights, and limits liability for harm, the ultimate affront to libertarianism. I also wonder why he continues to argue his inane "hypocrisy of working for the government" argument when it is precisely what he has been advocating that libertarians do to change the system since he first came to this blog, also ignoring that I have saved the government far more money than I have taken from it via legal defense. Perhaps some new hearing aids, or in this case magnification software is in order.

"I wonder how Stuart the Pest can possibly argue..."

Because he's a troll. The urbandictionary.com definition is: "One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument"

That fits pretty perfectly. Even mentioning his name is achieving his desired effect, to get a rise out of someone.

Dan, funny you sent the link to youtube, I had been clicking between that, trying to finally figure out Travis Picking via a u-tube guitar site and AR when my fingers cramped.

My guess is there is a law in place that prohibits outside burning. The police were probably called, somebody reporting a fire. When a call for a fire comes in the FD is dispatched. From small fires grow big ones is the conventional wisdom. The cop was doing his job, the volunteers were doing theirs aand the guy with the cell phone was acting like a spoiled brat.

If they let him have his little fire, against a law that makes sense, the next guy lights his a little bigger, and so on. That foam was probably overkill on the FD's part, but the guy deserved it. I think the officer showed tremendous restraint. Cell phone warriers are everywhere. I had a guy shot last week, his friends were more concerned with filming it for youtube than they were with getting out of the way.

Perfect example as to why I should be elected to the State Senate.

www.gately4senate.com

I understand the slippery slope argument, although I do not agree with it. I know that police officers have the ability to exercise discretion in their jobs (although they do not do so nearly enough), so I was wondering if the fire department had a similar policy in place. I think the person recording made some very good points to the police officer at the beginning regarding his needlessly authoritative and rude demeanor. Uniforms can often turn people into terrible versions of themselves.

I appreciate the input.

This Stuart is obviously a troll. Allowing his continued prescence is of no benefit to this blog.

Mike's comments regarding laws against small fires are analogous to government rules against creating the "appearance of impropriety". Corruption begins with that small fire that goes unheeded.

Let's buy stuiea ticket to "progressive, enlightened Denmark".He will learn to his chagrin that they do not have the same doormat liberal immigration policies we do.
Nice to picture Stuie asking the jailer for more toilet paper in a Danish immigration lockup.

I just watched the fire video again. Had it been me called to the fire, which was in full view of a main road, and the property owner carried on the way he did I would have first put the fire out, them made absolutely certain that every fine, summons or other penalty be utilized.

Had the fire been in the rear of the shed, and the guy showed even an iota of understanding that I had a job to do, John Q. Public would continue to use their cell phones to report him and his fire, and if I didn't act more people than he would question my job performance I would have used discretion and put a dog on a stick and joined him.

You've got a mean authoritarian streak in you, Michael. Every time I have had dealt with the fire departments in my life has been an extremely frustrating and unnecessary experience, with overreaction, authoritarianism, threats, and extremely rude behavior being directed my way by my "public servants." I cannot even imagine treating a member of the public the way the cops and fire departments regularly do. Even in dealing with the hardened criminals I have as part of my job, I try never to forget that they are in a broad sense my employer, that I am no better than they, and that people can only be changed for the better by setting an example and persuading them to do so voluntarily.

Dan, read my blog, www.rescuingprovidence.com if you want a better understanding of what we, or at least me, do.

Maybe we're seeing this from opposing viewpoints, but that guy was definitely looking for a fight, and he was the antagonist during the entire video.

We're definitely seeing it from different viewpoints. Central to libertarianism is the "do no harm" principle, which prohibits initiation of force against other human beings. Therefore I examine every interaction in terms of who is initiating force against whom. If somebody has broken a law by harming somebody else, I don't see government intervention as unjustified in that scenario, but that is a high burden to meet and it usually falls short by erring on the immoral side of gross overinclusion i.e. the law is the law, slippery slope, etc.

If we haven't actually harmed anyone, when government enters our private lives and threatens us with penalties, I view the fight as having already been started by government. They are initiating force. While I do not recommend physically resisting or defending oneself violently against that aggression, I do not see civil disobedience or noncompliance, or simple verbal protesting at that point to be childish, foolish, rude, disrespectful, or any of the other adjectives statists like to us for those who do not go along to get along. I see the cop in that situation as rude for abusing his discretion, and I wish the fire department had deescalated rather than escalating the situation when they showed up. I personally would have made sure that the fire pit was safe from spreading, obtained a promise from the individuals that they would keep it that way, and then left without initiating coercion against them.

But what about the other citizens who will continue to call 911 or the police and fire departments directly, and they will call. They will be first to complain to their mayor, selectperson or whoever about the firefighter who showed up and neglected to do his job. And what if an ember did fly from the fire, which is unlikely but a definite possibility, and caught some brush in a remote area on fire, and that fire spread, and some campers were killed in the process. What then?

I considered myself a libertarian for years, albeit without really understanding the concept. It beat anarchy and was better than the government, I thought then. Now, I just don't see it working. Things are too complicated. Maybe in a smaller society.

My two roommates in law school were libertarian sympathizers - they couldn't stand government and saw how corrupt and ineffective it was, but they frequently countered that voluntaryism and minarchism don't scale well. It's a totally valid criticism, and it may very well be accurate, although I'd like to actually try it in a state or county before I give up on it (our government has a strong interest in seeing that this never, ever happens, no matter how limited the scope of the experiment).

My typical counter-argument to them was two-pronged. 1) My first point was that the type of government that works is entirely dependent upon the underlying culture of the population being governed, and culture can change. When you mention the people who feel the need to constantly tattle on their neighbors by calling up big brother, even when there is no harm to them, I see that as a cultural phenomenon. People certainly don't behave that way in other places, and they didn't in other times. This country has been moving toward bigger government for centuries, and it is the only way that most people living today know how to interact with each other anymore. There is no question that they have become dependent, which is why I don't advocate pulling the system out from under everyone at once, or even at all provided that they allow those of us who wish to opt out to do so. One of the reasons why the Free State Project is such a promising idea is the very fact that it is self-selecting, and those who want to live in a more voluntary society and are capable of doing so can move to New Hampshire while those who prefer a statist society can move to Rhode Island or Massachusetts or New York. 2)The second argument I made was that while libertain societies do not scale well, no type of society does. Look at all the problems the growth of our population in the United States has caused. Most people don't even know who their representatives are any more. The administrative state is out of control and totally unaccountable. The federal government is growing exponentially and spending without any consideration of tomorrow. Rules that are good for New York or Florida are being imposed upon Montana and Vermont. These weren't any kind of problems that people had to deal with at the time of the country's founding, when the population was a fraction of its current size and people actually knew their representatives and the issues that were important to them.

Michael-FWIW I've never encountered firefighters who arrived at an emergency who weren't the best people you'd want there.
I'm not getting it about "authoritarianism".
I dealt with illegal aliens who were just working here illegally and I treated them like traffic violators.
I also dealt with (mainly)illegal and legal aliens and US citizens who were total scumbags and dealt with them the way I needed to.
My mom was treated great by Providence firefighters four times in the last year.She's 97 and they were outstanding in the way they handled her.That's it.

That was my point, Joe - most of the time there is no emergency, like in this backyard barbecue instance, but when there is no emergency police and firefighters are still in emergency mode, because it is all they have been trained to do and the power disparity turns them into their worst selves. Barking orders, making threats, getting angry, escalating - it's not an appropriate way to treat members of the public unless they have done something very harmful or dangerous that requires immediate remedy. I've personally never needed the fire department's services because I'm not a moron and I don't set my things on fire, but there have been several instances where they showed up to property I was on at the time because of burned toast or a closed fireplace flue and proceeded to treat me and everyone else extremely rudely, overreacting and flexing their authority all over the place. So many of our public servants have forgotten their true place, who pays their salary, and for what purpose. Discretion written into their job descriptions by law is always abused to the max, which is why I don't believe in relying upon it in the first place, e.g. "We don't need to legalize marijuana because police don't arrest people for it in the first place," or "We don't need restrictions on disorderly conduct enforcement because police will only arrest people who need to be arrested." Yeah right.

Thanks, Joe.

I don't know, Dan. I've responded to thousands of calls and never acted the way you describe, nor have I witnessed it more than a few times.

Well, your idea of exercising restraint is my idea of verbal abuse in the case of the policeman in the video, so what you would consider appropriate behavior for a fireman taking air readings in a family home after an accidentally closed fireplace flue led to some smoke wafting in, I would likely consider rude, condescending, authoritative behavior. A difference in perspective, as we were discussing earlier.

Dan-the vast majority of people who call the fire department in a place like Providence don't do it because they act like morons-it's because they are sick or injured.
In most locales firemen are also medical first responders.NYC has a separate EMT division,but most places don't.

"In most locales firemen are also medical first responders.NYC has a separate EMT division,but most places don't."

Do you think this is an efficient use of resources, Joe? I think a good start would be scaling down fire departments to what is actually needed to fight FIRES. Professional firemen have got to be one of the most expensive types of public worker we have when all the additional training and the customary fraudulent disability retirement at 50 are taken into account, not to mention they want brand new equipment nearly every single year.

Thanks, Dan. You were starting to make sense. This comment put things back in perspective.

Ok, you're right, Michael. Using fully-staffed professional fire departments with screaming fire engines, oxygen tanks, fire-retardant clothing, axes, and jaws of life to respond to elderly patients, homeless, and heroin addicts makes perfect sense. And there is no problem with disability pension fraud in the Providence and Boston fire departments. None whatsoever.

Dan-why have two bureaucracies(EMT and Fire)when one will do?
Savings to the taxpayer there.
Fraud exists everywhere.firemen get hurt.They get killed.Please don't let some bad apples diminish unselfish and brave service.There are no firemen in my family and there have only been two cops-myself and a distant cousin who was shot and partially paralyzed in a gun battle with two scumbags who had just murdered four innocent robbery victims and wounded five others.
I guess he scammed,huh?
I'm not dumping on you,just suggesting a little thought on the subject.

Joe, there isn't much cost of bureaucracy in those services, the real costs are regularly training, compensating, and supplying the personnel. Having fire departments respond to all sorts of medical emergencies (I use the term loosely since most of them are anything but) costs more money for the same reason sending drug addicts and illegal aliens to ERs for medical treatment or arresting them and housing them in jail costs more money. Consolidation of services can be a very bad, and inefficient thing. This is why private firms usually specialize. It's only good in certain types of scenarios, like government entities that provide utterly worthless services in the first place.

"Some bad apples"? Literally half of the Boston fire department is under federal investigation for disability fraud. Remember the guy who won a bodybuilding competition while out on disability? And they all happen to get injured moving a file cabinet the same day they fill in for their supervisor to get higher pension pay through a loophole, so to say the whole department doesn't know exactly what is going on is silly. I don't believe for a minute that Providence is any different for obvious reasons and I've heard the same kinds of stories in the news and from people who worked here ("whose turn is it to get smoke inhalation?").

Cops don't need to scam the system, they can earn 150-250k/year legit through overtime detail, their job is a scam - period. My condolences to your distant cousin - he was brave/unlucky/honest/stupid enough to actually do his job and fight real criminals, unlike all the Boston ans Providence construction details whose job it is to stand by the side of the road and sip Dunkin' Donuts coffee every day.

we are firefighters. And emergency medical technicians. And Haz-Mat techs. And flood responders. And extrication experts. And get the baby's head out from the railing pros. An snake removers. And Hi-level rope rescuers. And river rescuers. And the guys who wash down the highway after the fatality. And the people who get you into the house you locked yourself out of. We get the dog out of the well, the danger out of the way and the wounded to the hospital. Firefighter is just a name we keep because we like the history and tradition.

There certainly were a lot of disability scams going on, and some go on now as well, most aided by able-minded lawyers who know how to manipulate the legalities.

The majority of us do our jobs, and retire after serving our time. If we get hurt, we get a disability pension.

Dan-LOL.My cousin wasn't stupid,nor can I say he was all that honest.After all,he was on the Chicago PD.He as brave enough,and actually quite lucky because one of he gunmen fired a round through the closed window of his unmarked cruiser(he was the passenger)and it would have hit him on the head if the window had been down.As it was,the bullet was deflected into his groin where it severed his sciatic nerve.He was able to get out of the vehicle and return fire,wounding one suspect.The other supect was hit 27 times in the ensuing exchange with backup units and didn't have to go to trial.
In addition to shooting nine people the suspects had a 10 year old girl they had kidnapped with them.They raped and sodomized her before they were caught up with.
The surviving gunman received the death penalty burt thanks to the crooked bleeding heart Illinois Governor(a Republican)he was commuted.The Governor wound up doing Federal time.
I just related this as a sobering reminder of the kind of people walking among us.