This morning’s publication of an Open Letter about immigration by leading conservatives prompted me to re-read a draft posting I had last edited on May 26. Here is that late-May posting:
Now that we have the Senate and House going into conference with the objective of negotiating a final bill out of two very different bills, it is worth taking a step back and asking ourselves: What are the big issues in this illegal immigration debate? In other words, what policies and values are at stake as those negotiations begin and where should we go from here?
Let me begin with an analogy:
Think back to when you were in elementary school. Remember the occasional kid who would not play by the rules? Now, in most cases, peer pressure corrected their aberrant behavior. But sometimes it did not. And, without the presence of teachers or school aides to adjudicate the situation, a bully could get away with uncivilized behavior and disrupt the peaceful actions of kids who were simply trying to play by the rules.
Now recall how you felt if you or your friends were taken advantage of: The bully was being unfair. Playing fair – by playing by the rules – is a key principle of American life. It is why we don’t like cheaters – in school, on the ball field, in business or in politics.
Whether we will play fair with illegal immigration concerns defines the core issue of this debate.
What the American people get – and many of the Washington politicians from both parties do not get – is that we understand this Senate bill is amnesty for lawbreakers. For corporate lawbreakers and for illegal alien lawbreakers. This bill rewards all of them for breaking the law by relieving them of any consequences for their past illegal actions. And it is no less troubling that the structural incentives of the bill will ensure future behaviors are equally reprehensible. All of this is unfair and wrong.
The Senate bill fails to codify a sense of fair play – aka the rule-of-law in legal terms – into public policies that enhance our ability to live together peacefully as a society. It is actually worse than that because it makes future societal conflict more likely.
These initial points also clarify what are NOT the big issues here. This is not about being racist or hating minorities, no matter how hard some amnesty advocates will push that shtick. All you have to do is read the postings on this blogsite, from well before the illegal immigration issue moved front-and-center, to know that many of us who are agitated about illegal immigration come from families that marched with and were outspokenly supportive of the noble cause led by Martin Luther King, Jr. And because this is a rule-of-law issue, it is also not a civil rights issue.
The American people see through all the moral preening by various parties and have cut to the heart of the matter. Under the status quo, they observe:
The government passes laws they have no intention of enforcing and grants benefits to people who have not earned them.
Businesses are willing to break the law in order to get cheap labor and increase their profits.
Unions are looking for easy marks to recruit for membership, thereby increasing their power.
Both political parties are willing to ignore serious and unresolved policy issues so they can maximize their chances of attracting more Hispanics to their respective parties.
Radicals – like many who organized the May 1 rallies – are promoting an anti-American vision of separatist identity politics completely disconnected from the Founding principles of our country.
Mexico is in political disarray, has an economy that does not generate enough jobs, and threatens to sue our country just for protecting our border.
Illegal immigrants (and many of their advocates) are effectively saying “I am here so deal it with it on my terms.”
Broadly speaking, there are national security, economic and cultural issues at stake here and none is being addressed with any rigor. The American people understand that a failure to deal effectively with any of the three issues diminishes the quality of our country’s life – and could even threaten its existence over time.
There are three specific policy issues at the center of this debate:
American sovereignty: Will we set our own laws about immigration as a country or will we let illegal aliens or foreign countries drive our laws?
Rule of law: Will we enforce fairly the laws on our books, thereby ensuring a consistent – and not corrupt – application of those laws?
Assimilation – Becoming an American citizen is an honor, not a right. We want all citizens to share that sense of honor. So, what does it mean to be an American citizen and how will immigrants be taught American history and the uniqueness of the American experiment in ordered liberty?
So where do we go from here? I would suggest several key points:
We need to transform immigration processes from dishonest to honest practices. The only way we will get to that point is if we first skewer the moral preeners and drive the debate to a focus on both the 3 broad issues (national security, economic, cultural) and the 3 specific policy issues (American sovereignty, rule-of-law, assimilation) mentioned above.
There is a consensus about the need for enforcement, both at the border and with employer compliance. We should begin there and do that right.
There is not a consensus on what to do next and the worst thing we can do is force another law onto the books that either makes no sense or will not be enforced. There is an analogy with the abortion issue. This country became polarized because the Supreme Court acted in a way that pre-empted a national debate from occurring, from allowing a broad consensus to develop. In its current form, this Senate bill is likely to lead to a similar outcome. The issues won’t go away; the passions will not diminish. But the debate will be stopped dead in its tracks and that will only polarize the country. There is much to discuss and we should conduct a reasoned debate at the national level about immigration issues – such as how to deal with the existing illegal aliens in our country, guest worker strategies, and so forth. If we did that, a national consensus would emerge. None of us would likely prefer every outcome but the odds are we could find a way to policies that are generally acceptable to most Americans.
My personal hope is that a more limited bill comes out of conference and we can then conduct a thoughtful public debate on how best to do the right thing and keep America strong. We owe nothing less to our children and to the future of America.
[Open full post]Over on Dust in the Light: “A Life Begins” offers some explanation for my relative lack of literary activity in recent months.
[Open full post]Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!
I am fortunate to have a great Dad, about whom I wrote this last year. He is still going strong one year later. Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
National Review Online has several interesting articles on the role of fathers:
Indispensable: Fathers and their day
The Father Effect: It can’t be replaced
Husband’s Day: Your children will thank you
Hope each of you Dads out there have a great day!
Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!
I am fortunate to have a great Dad, about whom I wrote this last year. He is still going strong one year later. Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
National Review Online has several interesting articles on the role of fathers:
Indispensable: Fathers and their day
The Father Effect: It can’t be replaced
Husband’s Day: Your children will thank you
Hope each of you Dads out there have a great day!
To Empower People: From State to Civil Society was a book published in 1996 and edited by Michael Novak. It is a group of essays which take a retrospective look at the policy recommendations contained in a 1977 book by Peter Berger and Richard John Neuhaus entitled To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy .
The first chapter of the original 1977 book defines some structural challenges we face in today’s society and offers a policy framework for solving some of those problems:
[Open full post]Two seemingly contradictory tendencies are evident in current thinking about public policy in America. First, there is a continuing desire for the services provided by the welfare state…The second tendency is one of strong animus against government, bureaucracy, and bigness as such…
…we suggest that the modern welfare state is here to stay…but that alternative mechanisms are possible to provide welfare-state services.
The current anti-government, anti-bigness mood is not irrational. Complaints about impersonality, unresponsiveness, and excessive interference, as well as the perception of rising costs and deteriorating services – these are based upon empirical and widespread experience…At the same time there is widespread public support for publicly addressing major problems of our society in relieving poverty, in education, health care, and housing, and in a host of other human needs…
…The alternatives proposed here…can solve some problems…become the basis of far-reaching innovations in public policy, perhaps of a new paradigm…
The basic concept is that of what we are calling mediating structures…defined as those institutions standing between the individual in his private life and the large institutions of public life.
Modernization brings about a historically unprecedented dichotomy between public and private life. The most important large institution in the ordering of modern society is the modern state…In addition, there are the large economic conglomerates of capitalistic enterprise, big labor, and the growing bureaucracies that administer wide sectors of the society, such as in education…All these institutions we call the megastructures.
Then there is that modern phenomenon called private life…
For the individual in modern society, life is an ongoing migration between these two spheres, public and private. The megastructures are typically alienating, that is, they are not helpful in providing meaning and identity for individual existence. Meaning, fulfillment, and personal identity are to be realized in the private sphere. While the two spheres interact in many ways, in private life the individual is left very much to his own devices, and thus is uncertain and anxious…
The dichotomy poses a double crisis. It is a crisis for the individual who must carry on a balancing act between the demands of the two spheres. It is a political crisis because the megastructures (notably the state) come to be devoid of personal meaning and are therefore viewed as unreal or even malignant…Many who handle it more successfully than most have access to institutions that mediate between the two spheres. Such institutions have a private face, giving private life a measure of stability, and they have a public face, transferring meaning and value to the megastructure. Thus, mediating structures alleviate each facet of the double crisis of modern society…
Our focus is on four such mediating structures – neighborhood, family, church, and voluntary association. This is by no means an exhaustive list…
Without institutionally reliable processes of mediation, the political order becomes detached from the values and realities of individual life. Deprived of its moral foundation, the political order is “delegitimized.” When that happens, the political order must be secured by coercion rather than by consent. And when that happens, democracy disappears.
The attractiveness of totalitarianism…is that it overcomes the dichotomy of private and public existence by imposing on life one comprehensive order of meaning…
Democracy is “handicapped” by being more vulnerable to the erosion of meaning in its institutions…That is why mediation is so crucial to democracy. Such mediation cannot be sporadic and occasional; it must be institutionalized in structures. The structures we have chosen to study have demonstrated a great capacity for adapting and innovating under changing conditions. Most important, they exist where people are, and that is where sound public policy should always begin…
According to this morning’s ProJo:
More than 14,500 Rhode Island Democrats have switched their voter affiliations within the past six months to participate in the Sept. 12 Republican primary, a figure that experts say will probably help incumbent Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in his campaign against Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey.
State elections records compiled by the secretary of state’s office show that 13,596 Democrats switched their affiliations to independent — or unaffiliated in the state’s political argot — which would make them eligible to vote in the primary. An additional 987 Democrats switched to Republican, thus making them eligible to vote in the GOP primary.
That’s quite a number, especially given the historic turnout of a GOP primary. I wonder if all of the switching has to do with the Laffey / Chafee race, though. Governor Carcieri does face a primary challenger this fall, too, and many believe that traditionally Democrat labor unions are quietly behind Michaud’s candidacy. Let’s not forget that. I’m also not so sure that all of this party switching augers as well for Sen. Chafee as most of the experts believe.
I would bet that many Democrats simply don’t think that Laffey can win state wide. So, they believe that by disaffiliating and voting in the GOP primary they can kill the two biggest GOP birds with one stone. Should Laffey and Michaud win, Democrats no doubt believe that both Whitehouse and Fogerty would roll to general election wins. Of course, any such forecasting doesn’t take into account that the vast majority of independent RI voters may not appreciate the genius of such political calculations.
Lowering the acceptable rate of annual property tax increases is a good idea. (I wonder why our Democrat dominated general assembly is tackling this now…Oh yeah, it’s an election year). Senator Teresa Paiva Weed (D-Newport) is leading the charge in the effort.
Currently, communities are prohibited from raising their tax levy by more than 5.5 percent in any given year. Paiva Weed’s bill would start lowering that rate to 5.25 percent in fiscal year 2008 and dropping another quarter percentage point each year until the cap hits 4 percent in 2013…The bill would also limit school committees from proposing budgets to their city and town councils that exceed the same caps.
The story notes that there are ways to circumvent the cap such as in the case of a population boom and the resulting need for more government infrastructure. Now for the concerns.
One of the largest is due to the fact that School Committees operate independently of most city and town governments and–under the Caruolo Act–they can go to court to get the appropriation dollars they want, even if the money isn’t in the city budget. One solution offered would be to increase state aid to education. That could make sense, but that would probably have to be part of a different piece of legislation that would deal with consolidating education administration at the state level.
Finally, the NEA’s Robert Walsh offered a good, pragmatic “what if,” saying that “theoretically, communities might raise taxes by the maximum allowed each year just to ‘maintain their flexibility in years that are aberrations.'”
Some news events do not require commentary. This is one such news event.
Paul Caron, the Charles Hartsock Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law writes about how the IRS to Refund $15 Billion of Telephone Taxes to Consumers:
The Treasury Department and IRS announced this morning that after losing in five circuit courts of appeals, the Government is throwing in the towel and will no longer seek to enforce the 3% excise tax on long-distance telephone calls enacted during the Spanish-American War of 1898 as a “luxury” tax on wealthy Americans who owned telephones. The IRS will will issue $15 billion in refunds to consumers for long-distance telephone service taxes paid over the past three years:
No immediate action is required by taxpayers.
Refunds will be a part of 2006 tax returns filed in 2007.
Refund claims will cover all excise tax paid on long-distance service over the last three years (time allowed given statute of limitations).
Interest will be paid on refunds.
The IRS is working on a simplified method for individuals to use to claim a refund on their 2006 tax returns.
Refunds will not include tax paid on local telephone service, which was not involved in the litigation.
Makes you just shake your head, doesn’t it?
[Open full post]Walter Williams writes about Economics of prices:
[Open full post]Here’s what one reader wrote: “Williams, I can understand how the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and Middle East political uncertainty can jack up gasoline prices. But it’s price-gouging for the oil companies to raise the price of all the gasoline already bought and stored before the crisis.”…Such allegations reflect a misunderstanding of how prices are determined.
Let’s start off with an example. Say you owned a small 10-pound inventory of coffee that you purchased for $3 a pound. Each week you’d sell me a pound for $3.25. Suppose a freeze in Brazil destroyed half of its coffee crop, causing the world price of coffee to immediately rise to $5 a pound. You still have coffee that you purchased before the jump in prices. When I stop by to buy another pound of coffee from you, how much will you charge me? I’m betting that you’re going to charge me at least $5 a pound. Why? Because that’s today’s cost to replace your inventory.
Historical costs do not determine prices; what economists call opportunity costs do. Of course, you’d have every right not to be a “price-gouger” and continue to charge me $3.25 a pound. I’d buy your entire inventory and sell it at today’s price of $5 a pound and make a killing.
If you were really enthusiastic about not being a “price-gouger,” I’d have another proposition. You might own a house that you purchased for $55,000 in 1960 that you put on the market for a half-million dollars. I’d simply accuse you of price-gouging and demand that you sell me the house for what you paid for it, maybe adding on a bit for inflation since 1960. I’m betting you’d say, “Williams, if I sold you my house for what I paid for it in 1960, how will I be able to pay today’s prices for a house to live in?”
If there’s any conspiracy involved in today’s high gasoline prices, it’s a conspiracy of cowardice and stupidity by the U.S. Congress…
Because of costly regulations and political restrictions, U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be…
…If Congress mandated that CEOs work for zero pay, gasoline prices would fall by less than a penny. If Congress mandated that oil companies earn zero profit, gasoline prices might fall by 10 cents; of course, we’d have to worry about gasoline availability next year.
CEOs tend to be cowards when dealing with politicians and environmental extremists…
The Laffey campaign has responded to the Chafee campaign’s latest round of broadcast advertising, going as far as to say that the Chafee campaign is “putting forth utter lies against his primary opponent Mayor Steve Laffey in an attempt to save his political career from impending disaster”.
The Laffey campaign takes extreme exception to three claims made by the Chafee campaign. The first two are made in Chafee TV ads…
1. Laffey swore to fight special interests. Instead he gave a city vendor a secret no-bid contract in exchange for thousands in campaign contributions.
Citing a Providence Journal article from November 19, 2005 as support, the Laffey campaign details why they believe the use of the terms “secret” and “no-bid” is not accurate…
- The City of Cranston engaged in two projects with Nestor Traffic Systems. It is unclear which one Senator Chafee is referring to, but either way, he has his facts all wrong.
- The first project was a contract the City of Cranston signed with Nestor Traffic Systems to test a system that measures the speed of passing cars in May of 2005. This contract was never a secret. In fact, Mayor Laffey held a press conference on May 8, 2005 announcing the contract. The Providence Journal was there and reported on it on May 9th, as well as multiple news stations.
- The city did not require a bid because it was a mere $10 contract for a trial phase only. Had the City of Cranston decided to use the technology, it would have put the program out to bid for a long-term contract.
- The second project occurred in June of 2005, when the City of Cranston awarded a bid to Nestor Traffic Systems for red light cameras AFTER the project went out to bid and Nestor was the lowest bidder. Nestor was awarded the bid by the Board of Contract and Purchase, which Mayor Laffey does not control.
Furthermore, the Chafee campaign has not presented evidence of a quid-pro-quo between Nestor and anyone in Cranston city government to support the “in exchange” claim. If we are to assume something unseemly is going on anytime government contractors make contributions to a campaign, should we apply the same standard to Federal elected officials also? For instance, if a Senator announces that a Federal contract for millions of dollars is being given to a corporation that will be doing work in his state, and then the Senator receives a campaign contribution from that corporation, should that contribution automatically be assumed to be tainted? I think that that’s much too harsh a standard.
The second TV-ad complaint concerns Mayor Laffey’s spending record in Cranston. Senator Chafee’s ad says…
2. Stephen Laffey campaigned to cut spending, but once elected he increased spending nearly 20%.
As the Laffey campaign points out, in terms of percentage increase, the spending records of Lincoln Chafee and Steve Laffey over their first four years in office as Mayors are very similar. According to the sources cited in the Laffey press release, plus a few others (list)…
- Cranston went from a budget of $186,000,000 the year before Mayor Laffey took over in Cranston to a budget of $226,200,000 in his fourth year as Mayor. That’s an increase of $40,200,000 or 21.6%. Warwick went from a budget of $145,000,000 to a budget of $175,000,000 in Mayor Chafee’s first four years in office, an increase of 20.6%
- The increases in non-school department spending are also roughly similar. Cranston’s non-school department budget went from about $90,500,000 in 2003 to $102,400,000 proposed for FY2007, an increase of 11.6%. Warwick went from $72,000,000 to $79,500,000, an increase of 10.4%
- Warwick, however, already had a budget surplus when Lincoln Chafee took over as Mayor. Cranston was on the verge of bankruptcy when Steve Laffey came into office.
So ultimately, when the Chafee folks argue “look what he does, not what he says” in their negative ads, aren’t they arguing a non-sequitur — don’t vote for the challenger, because he has the same record that our incumbent does!
The third complaint by the Laffey campaign is…
3. In his radio ad, Senator Chafee claims he supported the attack against the Taliban.
Marc has already discussed the substance of this claim…
[Open full post]It is incorrect to simply state that Sen. Chafee didn’t support attacking the Taliban: he eventually did, even if with reservation. The fact is that Sen. Chafee did support the action and it is not correct to imply–as the Laffey ad does–that Sen. Chafee never supported attacking the Taliban.
The Laffey campaign’s subsequent defense of their ad rests on the reluctance of Sen. Chafee to make a firm decision. To my mind, this defense of the actual ad is actually more compelling and (yes) truthful than the original.
