Another NAFTA nail is about to be hammered into the coffin Washington is building for the US economy. Within the next few days our borders will be opened to the Mexican trucking industry in an unprecedented way. A "pilot" program is starting which will allow trucks from Mexico to haul goods beyond the 25 mile buffer zone to any point in the United States . Officials claim this is being done with utmost oversight, but Americans still have their legitimate concerns. Rather than securing our borders, we seem to be providing more pores for illegal aliens, drug dealers, and terrorists to permeate.
Not only that, but the anti-competitive and burdensome yoke of over-regulation of our industry at home is about to send a lot more Americans to the unemployment lines. The American Trucking industry has been heavily regulated since 1935. The express purpose of The Motor Carrier Act was to eliminate competition through permitting, regulating tariff rates, even approving routes. American trucking companies have been fighting ever since for some relief from the substantial regulatory burdens placed on them. Regulatory compliance is the single most daunting barrier to entry, and eats up huge amounts of profit. Now, to add insult to injury, Mexican trucking companies, not subject to the same onerous standards, will be allowed to roll right in and squeeze American industry further. This will severely undermine the ability of American trucking companies to remain solvent.
The fact that this is being done in the name of free trade is disturbing. Free trade is not complicated, yet NAFTA and CAFTA are comprised of thousands of pages of complicated legal jargon. All free trade really needs is two words: Low tariffs. Free trade does not require coordination with another government to benefit citizens here. Just like domestic businesses don't pay taxes, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs – consumers do, in the form of higher prices. If foreign governments want to hurt their own citizens with protectionist tariffs, let them. But let us set a good example here, and show the world an honest example of true free trade. And let us stop hurting American workers with mountains of red tape in the name of safety. Safety standards should be set privately, by the industry and by the insurance companies who have the correct motivating factors to do so.
Free trade is not the problem, and pseudo free trade is what is being offered in the wrongly named North American Free Trade Agreement and all its offshoots. The problem is a government-managed economy and the burdensome regulation that results. For our economy to remain competitive in the world, we must remember what it is to be truly free. We must lift the regulatory shackles threatening to sink our industries into oblivion. Free trade begins with freedom domestically, and we can't afford to lose that.
Monday
RON PAUL WINS....34%
Ron Paul wins another debate for the Republicans in New Hampshire. He came in first with 34% of the vote. The next in line was Giuliani 17% and everyone else was below that.
Wednesday
WHAT I THINK....LOGAN DARROW CLEMENTS
Nothing seems to stop the unrelenting growth of government. Every year spending increases, taxes rise and our freedoms are diminished. Property rights, free enterprise and personal freedom are being wiped out.
Freedom is not a slogan. It's a requirement for human life and prosperity. As humans our mind is our primary tool of survival. To live and thrive we must be allowed to act on the product of our thinking so long as it does not involve initiating force or fraud against others. Likewise, we must be protected against theft whether it is carried out by a criminal or a politician. To take away your property is to take away that portion of your life that gave rise to it.
Free enterprise is the engine of prosperity that turns this thinking into products and industries. It has elevated man from caves to skyscrapers, increased our lifespan and given us flight. Government on the other hand has the unique ability to destroy. It can wipe out your industry with a new tax, it can wipe out your savings with inflation. Each new batch of laws takes a thousand little bites from your freedom like a swarm of piranhas attacking a cow in the Amazon River.
Ron Paul would scale back government more than any other candidate. He'd blast away at the millions of chains that restrain American prosperity the moment he became president. The economy would boom and our economic might would translate directly into military might and security. Mounting an effective defense is extremely expensive whether we are opposing nations or terrorist groups. Only a thriving economy can support such a huge modern military. Look at the former Soviet Union if you need proof of this.
The other Republican candidates are caretakers of the welfare state. They express very little desire to shrink government and many of them have expanded the size and scope of government when they've had the chance. Only Ron Paul promises the revolution that America so urgently needs, the same sort of revolution that got our nation started in the first place.
So I'm not going to let the mainstream media push me into the circular logic of voting for a candidate simply because they are ahead in the polls. The poll leaders are ahead because the MSM decided to give them more attention in the first place. The mainstream media has its own agenda and it definitely does not involve reducing government. I'm throwing out the media darlings and supporting a man who will make America greater than it's ever been before by stomping out the cancer of government. I'm voting for the doctor from Texas, Congressman Ron Paul.
Freedom is not a slogan. It's a requirement for human life and prosperity. As humans our mind is our primary tool of survival. To live and thrive we must be allowed to act on the product of our thinking so long as it does not involve initiating force or fraud against others. Likewise, we must be protected against theft whether it is carried out by a criminal or a politician. To take away your property is to take away that portion of your life that gave rise to it.
Free enterprise is the engine of prosperity that turns this thinking into products and industries. It has elevated man from caves to skyscrapers, increased our lifespan and given us flight. Government on the other hand has the unique ability to destroy. It can wipe out your industry with a new tax, it can wipe out your savings with inflation. Each new batch of laws takes a thousand little bites from your freedom like a swarm of piranhas attacking a cow in the Amazon River.
Ron Paul would scale back government more than any other candidate. He'd blast away at the millions of chains that restrain American prosperity the moment he became president. The economy would boom and our economic might would translate directly into military might and security. Mounting an effective defense is extremely expensive whether we are opposing nations or terrorist groups. Only a thriving economy can support such a huge modern military. Look at the former Soviet Union if you need proof of this.
The other Republican candidates are caretakers of the welfare state. They express very little desire to shrink government and many of them have expanded the size and scope of government when they've had the chance. Only Ron Paul promises the revolution that America so urgently needs, the same sort of revolution that got our nation started in the first place.
So I'm not going to let the mainstream media push me into the circular logic of voting for a candidate simply because they are ahead in the polls. The poll leaders are ahead because the MSM decided to give them more attention in the first place. The mainstream media has its own agenda and it definitely does not involve reducing government. I'm throwing out the media darlings and supporting a man who will make America greater than it's ever been before by stomping out the cancer of government. I'm voting for the doctor from Texas, Congressman Ron Paul.
WHAT I THINK....LILA RAJIVA
What is it about Ron Paul that attracts as many and as diverse a group of people as are repelled?
For a number of people, right and left, it is his consistent opposition to the Iraq war.
It is a good reason. Moral courage allied with wisdom is as much in short supply these days as chastity at a political convention.
For others, it is Paul’s fiscal responsibility.
Dr. No has been pursing his lips at every form of political candy offered by the junk food vendors at the Capital. While many of his colleagues are letting out their belts, the wiry obstetrician is running marathons at 71.
While they keep getting caught in what used to be called "indiscretions," he has been married for fifty years. We would be foolish to judge people by the externals of their lives, for saints and sinners, puritans and bohemians not only cohabit, they frequently snuggle under the same skin. Nonetheless, it’s a relief to have a few people around in politics to remind us that it’s also perfectly all right to live uneventfully, even stodgily.
I say this as someone who has spent a large part of her life among musicians, writers, and now, financial newsletter writers – whose professional lives depend on their eccentricity and even contrariness.
There is however one critical difference between selling financial advice and intellectual nostrums on the one hand and delivering babies on the other – which is what Dr. Paul has done for most of his professional life. The success of obstetrics is pretty easy to ascertain. Either the child breathes and lives – or it doesn’t.
One can’t be a good obstetrician on theory alone. The practice is all.
Check the track record of the average stock tout and you might find nothing but bankruptcy filings and credit card debt. That, of course, will count for little with the tout’s avid customers who would mortgage their four walls and roof for his advice. And toss in their wives as a bonus.
As for the pedant, you wish he’d trip over one of his obtuse, meandering sentences and break his scrawny neck before he stuck it into the real world. But does anyone care? No. His pet theories may have driven the nation into premature recession if not down-right impotence, but the expert will be given not only anInstitute of his very own at some Ivy League, but the whole Earth along with it to run as he wishes.
There, winsome coeds will no doubt ornament every step of his way to a Nobel Prize.
Theory is easy. Any biped with a larynx and functioning synapses can come up with one.
It is practice that separates the goats from the sheep.
And that is the principle reason that the pundits are afraid of that revolution of the people that is the rise of Ron Paul.
Ron Paul wants to put the practice of citizenry back in the hands of citizens and take it away from the theorists.
Oh, the critics will tell you differently. They will tell you that Ron Paul is a theorist himself – and a crack-pot theorist as well. A patron of fringe economics. A gentlemanly loon. Or at least, dangerously far out on the right bank of the mainstream.
Since the mainstream has just finished wrecking a whole country abroad in a manner that Genghis Khan would have been proud of and is busy adding yet another to its sights; and since, in the meantime it’s also managed to find the time to dismantle several centuries worth of legal structure at home, you wonder why anyone would worry about that anyway.
But there you have the sad truth about man. He isn’t much concerned about anything besides how other people think of him. That’s all he thinks about all day long. For that he sweats and schleps, roils and toils. Status. Image. In groups. Out groups. Pariahs. Brahmins. The sum total of it all is – what does the other fellow think of me?
Right or wrong counts for far less. His conscience or soul for nothing at all. If he feels a pang, he swigs gelusil and turns on the hypnotic lights of his TV set.
And why? Because with no real, concrete practical knowledge anywhere between his ears, his skull rings with the lethal chatter of newspaper headlines and talk shows.
The patter of Those Who Know Better.
Hedge-fund managers who promise that all risk can be ironed out of your portfolio and make you pay for the wrinkles that aren’t.
Political scientists who invade a country from their desktops but don’t know how to boot it up again when it crashes.
Hucksters who dream up great stories for their products – and make a punch line out of the patsies who buy them.
We live in an empire run by experts.
But in the empire of experts, the man with horse sense is king.
And Ron Paul has horse sense.
The horse sense of mustangs, not geldings.
The kind of horse sense that bucks and sends you for a toss just when you thought you have everything under control. The horse sense that stops you from thinking about things so far off you couldn't possibly have spotted them – while tripping over things so close by you shouldn't ever have missed them.
The experts would have you believe that they can control your life and the life of entire nations by thinking long enough and hard enough about it. This is a theory so full of holes, it puts Swiss cheese to shame.
Studies have even shown (Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment – How Good Is It? How Can We Know?) that canny laymen do as well as experts when it comes to predicting the future. In fact, many do even better.
But it’s the experts who have broken us in.
The reason is simple. Experts promise us a simple sharp tool to dissect the complexity of the real world. But a dissection that thorough can only be a post-mortem. Cut through the warm body of society that fiercely and you turn it into a cadaver.
Gray is all theory, says Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust. The golden tree of life is green.
We will improve on the devil. Between book covers, theory may be gray – but it is an intricate gossamer of gray – like the tracery in a Gothic cathedral or the mysterious depths of an engraving by Gustave Dore.
We have no quarrel with it. Indeed, we have a weakness for it, as for all rich, superfluous things.
But a map is not a road, and a silhouette is not a human being. The trouble begins when experts begin to take their expertise so seriously that they forfeit their own road sense and their readers'. When they are so neutered by their reasoning that they cannot act – or worse yet, cannot desist from acting. And the trouble grows into disaster when their credulous followers, junkies of every news and TV show, rush behind them like rats behind the Hamelin piper – into every frippery and fad, every financial folly and military madness.
And that is what we have today in our empire of experts.
Worse than any war – which must at some point end – is the ideology that makes for war.
For that can go on forever. That tells us that "whatis" is also "what must be." You see, empires are made for experts as experts are made for empires. Without their theories to hold it up, the flimsy scaffold of government would fall of its own feebleness. And without that scaffold, the little men on top would be cut down to the same size as the rest of us.
And that, my friends, is the real reason why the experts fear Dr. Paul and the people love him.
For a number of people, right and left, it is his consistent opposition to the Iraq war.
It is a good reason. Moral courage allied with wisdom is as much in short supply these days as chastity at a political convention.
For others, it is Paul’s fiscal responsibility.
Dr. No has been pursing his lips at every form of political candy offered by the junk food vendors at the Capital. While many of his colleagues are letting out their belts, the wiry obstetrician is running marathons at 71.
While they keep getting caught in what used to be called "indiscretions," he has been married for fifty years. We would be foolish to judge people by the externals of their lives, for saints and sinners, puritans and bohemians not only cohabit, they frequently snuggle under the same skin. Nonetheless, it’s a relief to have a few people around in politics to remind us that it’s also perfectly all right to live uneventfully, even stodgily.
I say this as someone who has spent a large part of her life among musicians, writers, and now, financial newsletter writers – whose professional lives depend on their eccentricity and even contrariness.
There is however one critical difference between selling financial advice and intellectual nostrums on the one hand and delivering babies on the other – which is what Dr. Paul has done for most of his professional life. The success of obstetrics is pretty easy to ascertain. Either the child breathes and lives – or it doesn’t.
One can’t be a good obstetrician on theory alone. The practice is all.
Check the track record of the average stock tout and you might find nothing but bankruptcy filings and credit card debt. That, of course, will count for little with the tout’s avid customers who would mortgage their four walls and roof for his advice. And toss in their wives as a bonus.
As for the pedant, you wish he’d trip over one of his obtuse, meandering sentences and break his scrawny neck before he stuck it into the real world. But does anyone care? No. His pet theories may have driven the nation into premature recession if not down-right impotence, but the expert will be given not only anInstitute of his very own at some Ivy League, but the whole Earth along with it to run as he wishes.
There, winsome coeds will no doubt ornament every step of his way to a Nobel Prize.
Theory is easy. Any biped with a larynx and functioning synapses can come up with one.
It is practice that separates the goats from the sheep.
And that is the principle reason that the pundits are afraid of that revolution of the people that is the rise of Ron Paul.
Ron Paul wants to put the practice of citizenry back in the hands of citizens and take it away from the theorists.
Oh, the critics will tell you differently. They will tell you that Ron Paul is a theorist himself – and a crack-pot theorist as well. A patron of fringe economics. A gentlemanly loon. Or at least, dangerously far out on the right bank of the mainstream.
Since the mainstream has just finished wrecking a whole country abroad in a manner that Genghis Khan would have been proud of and is busy adding yet another to its sights; and since, in the meantime it’s also managed to find the time to dismantle several centuries worth of legal structure at home, you wonder why anyone would worry about that anyway.
But there you have the sad truth about man. He isn’t much concerned about anything besides how other people think of him. That’s all he thinks about all day long. For that he sweats and schleps, roils and toils. Status. Image. In groups. Out groups. Pariahs. Brahmins. The sum total of it all is – what does the other fellow think of me?
Right or wrong counts for far less. His conscience or soul for nothing at all. If he feels a pang, he swigs gelusil and turns on the hypnotic lights of his TV set.
And why? Because with no real, concrete practical knowledge anywhere between his ears, his skull rings with the lethal chatter of newspaper headlines and talk shows.
The patter of Those Who Know Better.
Hedge-fund managers who promise that all risk can be ironed out of your portfolio and make you pay for the wrinkles that aren’t.
Political scientists who invade a country from their desktops but don’t know how to boot it up again when it crashes.
Hucksters who dream up great stories for their products – and make a punch line out of the patsies who buy them.
We live in an empire run by experts.
But in the empire of experts, the man with horse sense is king.
And Ron Paul has horse sense.
The horse sense of mustangs, not geldings.
The kind of horse sense that bucks and sends you for a toss just when you thought you have everything under control. The horse sense that stops you from thinking about things so far off you couldn't possibly have spotted them – while tripping over things so close by you shouldn't ever have missed them.
The experts would have you believe that they can control your life and the life of entire nations by thinking long enough and hard enough about it. This is a theory so full of holes, it puts Swiss cheese to shame.
Studies have even shown (Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment – How Good Is It? How Can We Know?) that canny laymen do as well as experts when it comes to predicting the future. In fact, many do even better.
But it’s the experts who have broken us in.
The reason is simple. Experts promise us a simple sharp tool to dissect the complexity of the real world. But a dissection that thorough can only be a post-mortem. Cut through the warm body of society that fiercely and you turn it into a cadaver.
Gray is all theory, says Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust. The golden tree of life is green.
We will improve on the devil. Between book covers, theory may be gray – but it is an intricate gossamer of gray – like the tracery in a Gothic cathedral or the mysterious depths of an engraving by Gustave Dore.
We have no quarrel with it. Indeed, we have a weakness for it, as for all rich, superfluous things.
But a map is not a road, and a silhouette is not a human being. The trouble begins when experts begin to take their expertise so seriously that they forfeit their own road sense and their readers'. When they are so neutered by their reasoning that they cannot act – or worse yet, cannot desist from acting. And the trouble grows into disaster when their credulous followers, junkies of every news and TV show, rush behind them like rats behind the Hamelin piper – into every frippery and fad, every financial folly and military madness.
And that is what we have today in our empire of experts.
Worse than any war – which must at some point end – is the ideology that makes for war.
For that can go on forever. That tells us that "whatis" is also "what must be." You see, empires are made for experts as experts are made for empires. Without their theories to hold it up, the flimsy scaffold of government would fall of its own feebleness. And without that scaffold, the little men on top would be cut down to the same size as the rest of us.
And that, my friends, is the real reason why the experts fear Dr. Paul and the people love him.
SURRENDER SHOULD NOT BE AN OPTION
Faced with dwindling support of the Iraq War, the warhawks are redoubling their efforts. They imply we are in Iraq attacking those who attacked us, and yet this is not the case. As we know, Saddam Hussein, though not a particularly savory character, had nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons claim surrender should not be an option. In the same breath they claim we were attacked because of our freedoms. Why then, are they so anxious to surrender our freedoms with legislation like the Patriot Act, a repeal of our 4th amendment rights, executive orders, and presidential signing statements? With politicians like these, who needs terrorists? Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? This seems the epitome of cowardice coming from those who claim a monopoly on patriotic courage.
In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat.
They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.
The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one.
The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us?
The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.
In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat.
They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.
The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one.
The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us?
The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.
Monday
TEXAS STRAW VOTE
16.17%
On Saturday the State of Texas was having a straw vote for the Republican Party. Ron Paul didn't fair as well as his last couple of outings. And I am sure people will be quick to point that out.
But get this,in a single night Ron Paul took in more money -$102,000 - than the entire GOP apparatus did with its convoluted “first ever” straw poll - $97,500.
They expected 2,000 to vote, only 1300 reportedly did. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who finished third in the highly restrictive straw poll, had his most successful fund raiser ever in Texas.
Hmmmm! Still my man...
On Saturday the State of Texas was having a straw vote for the Republican Party. Ron Paul didn't fair as well as his last couple of outings. And I am sure people will be quick to point that out.
But get this,in a single night Ron Paul took in more money -$102,000 - than the entire GOP apparatus did with its convoluted “first ever” straw poll - $97,500.
They expected 2,000 to vote, only 1300 reportedly did. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who finished third in the highly restrictive straw poll, had his most successful fund raiser ever in Texas.
Hmmmm! Still my man...
Saturday
WHAT I THINK....RICK FISK
The worst rhetorical device used when discussing immigration and border control is the ad hominem, "illegal alien." It is used daily but its absurdity is rarely challenged other than to suggest it is a politically incorrect term.
There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.
The U.S. Constitution enumerates the rights we all possess as individuals. It doesn’t grant them nor does it claim to be exhaustive or authoritative on the subject. It is quite specific as to who possess rights; people; persons. In other words, anyone who can fog a mirror has rights.
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
An alien is generally defined as a person who is a citizen of another country or state. If you travel from Texas to Arizona, you are an alien there until you have complied with Arizona law on the matter of legal residency. That only means you are entitled to certain privileges such as less-expensive college tuition, a driver’s license issued by the state, etc. It does not mean that you are illegally in the state until such time as you become "legal." A state doesn’t have any legitimate power to deny your rights, but it can deny you certain privileges if you are an alien.
Traveling, without interference by some government official, is a fundamental human right. When I was a kid, you could travel between Mexico and the U.S. and between Canada and the U.S., without any identification. Nobody demanded you produce ID. A trip down to Ensenada or Tijuana was a regular occurrence for my family during the late 60s. Crossing the border was no big deal and that was at the height of the Viet Nam war. But today, we are told that this is no longer possible. The government cannot obey the constitution because that would lead to anarchy. See, if you obey the Supreme Law of the Land, that is anarchy. (Orwell would be so proud).
A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.
The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to harass people crossing the border unless those crossing are obviously intent on committing harm. The only authority given to congress relating to immigration was to determine what constituted citizenship. Since it is allegedly supposed to protect our rights, it has no legal authority to demand identification or to detain us merely because we cross a border. We celebrate Ellis Island, but we shouldn’t. It was a detainment camp that violated the rights of everyone who entered even if they gladly accepted it. Many people died there unnecessarily.
Now before you get upset with me, I am not asserting that we don’t have an immigration problem. We do, but, the current system is so corrupt, some are considering further ruining the rights of Americans in order to solve the problems created by it. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed will either make things worse, or only treat the symptoms.
The issue of illegal immigration is a political minefield. There are many causes and therefore no one solution can resolve them. As Dr. Paul has said on multiple occasions, the first problem that has to be addressed is birthright citizenship. You can’t do that without replacing or amending the 14th amendment with something that repudiates Supreme Court decisions holding that rights are conferred by birthright citizenship.
The 14th amendment is an abomination as was the legal opinion of the Supreme Court that incented its creation. It isn’t terrible because it presumes to tell states that their citizens have rights. It doesn’t do that at all. It is terrible because it legitimizes the milestone Supreme Court decision, Scott v.Sanford. Justice Taney in that decision "discovered" a legal loophole. You see, in spite of the plain words of the constitution, Taney argued that "people" and "persons" really meant "citizen". Since there was no legal decree making people citizens by birth, Dred Scott, who was born in the U.S., had no rights. What Taney meant to say, was that Dred Scot, a black man, was not human.
In a better world, Congress would have impeached all of the Justices who supported that decision. Instead, they proposed an amendment legitimizing the decision though intending to remedy the injustice wrought by the decision. The Dred Scot decision has never been overturned. If you don’t believe me, read US v Verrdugo-Urquidez decided in 1990. The court claimed that "people" is a "term of art" meant to describe citizens. In other words, rights are conferred by citizenship.
To work and to travel internationally, you must prove to authorities that you are a citizen. This renders you guilty until you can prove your innocence. Due to other abominable laws and decisions, you are also forced to pay to educate, feed and care for citizens who are such by consequence rather than allegiance.
Healthcare is the most oft-cited expense lending to bad immigration policy. The charity hospitals, country doctors and house calls of the past are but a memory as are reasonable costs for healthcare. It wasn’t always so expensive. My father made ninety cents an hour in 1962. He had no health insurance and didn’t need it. When I was born, he was able to pay for the entire hospital bill, which included a 3 day stay and a battery of drugs and test, in cash.
By 1990, when I was 28, if you didn’t have insurance, you couldn’t pay for a hospital birth in cash unless you were very well-to-do. Multiply the cost of just one hospital birth today by the tens of thousands per year who come here just to do that, and you have the initial cost of birthright citizenship given to those who have no means.
States have recently sought ways to curtail the cost of illegal immigration. California passed a proposition some years back that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Essentially the court said that privileges can’t be denied anyone, including non-citizens. Too bad the court isn’t as generous with rights.
A law passed in Oklahoma, sponsored by State Senator Randy Terrill, "terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens."
Oklahoma is no longer "O.K." for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. "When you put everything together in context," he contends, "the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won't stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they're deported. And that's exactly what House Bill 1804 does."
Now, this may seem like a great idea. It’s certainly working to rid Oklahoma of inherently illegal people. A mass exodus of the work force in Oklahoma is currently taking place in advance of the law taking affect November, 1, 2007. Parts of this law deal with the problem, and parts simply trample on the rights of all people working and living in Oklahoma, not just those considered illegal.
The Oklahoma law legitimizes the idea that it is moral and just to compel a person to show his papers in order to earn a living. It also interferes with business owners and presumes to tell them who they may hire. Lastly, the law gives federal police powers to local authorities. A side effect of this law will be the ruination of Oklahoma’s economy.
The wages for unskilled labor will rise, but so will prices. In order to attract workers, assuming that there are enough people to fill those roles, businesses will have to raise wages and then prices to cover the margin.
But that’s not the worst thing that will happen. The worst is that the legislature of Oklahoma will view the reduction in health and welfare costs to the State as a surplus that they can spend elsewhere. It will not only ruin the economy, but will also expand government.
Dr. Paul hasn’t just offered a solution which seeks to treat a symptom. He has repeatedly pointed out that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy poses a hidden tax on citizens as well as non-citizens; particularly those in the middle and lower income brackets. By devaluing the currency through inflation, immigrants who come here to work can’t afford healthcare and education because the costs are so high. Then again, neither can a large number of us "legal" people.
Healthcare has enjoyed an attack from both monetary policy and government regulations, making anything more than a cold or flu a potentially bankrupting event.
Ron Paul’s proposed solutions to the immigration problem make the most sense. He isn’t suggesting we further encroach on the rights of individual citizens. Immigration is one of the reasons given by some politicians for the necessity of a national ID card but Dr. Paul argues convincingly that it is not needed.
He also hasn’t suggested that we immediately start deporting people. His call to end birthright citizenship and welfare incentives, along with a monetary policy which restores confidence and value to the currency, attacks the root cause of systemic abuse rather than the symptoms. However, this will have to be preceded by a fundamental shift in the view that our rights are granted by virtue of citizenship rather than birth.
If we don’t adopt Ron Paul’s suggestions, and instead adopt the solutions proposed by his challengers, being illegal will be the only option available to us to preserve our own rights and liberties.
There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.
The U.S. Constitution enumerates the rights we all possess as individuals. It doesn’t grant them nor does it claim to be exhaustive or authoritative on the subject. It is quite specific as to who possess rights; people; persons. In other words, anyone who can fog a mirror has rights.
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
An alien is generally defined as a person who is a citizen of another country or state. If you travel from Texas to Arizona, you are an alien there until you have complied with Arizona law on the matter of legal residency. That only means you are entitled to certain privileges such as less-expensive college tuition, a driver’s license issued by the state, etc. It does not mean that you are illegally in the state until such time as you become "legal." A state doesn’t have any legitimate power to deny your rights, but it can deny you certain privileges if you are an alien.
Traveling, without interference by some government official, is a fundamental human right. When I was a kid, you could travel between Mexico and the U.S. and between Canada and the U.S., without any identification. Nobody demanded you produce ID. A trip down to Ensenada or Tijuana was a regular occurrence for my family during the late 60s. Crossing the border was no big deal and that was at the height of the Viet Nam war. But today, we are told that this is no longer possible. The government cannot obey the constitution because that would lead to anarchy. See, if you obey the Supreme Law of the Land, that is anarchy. (Orwell would be so proud).
A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.
The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to harass people crossing the border unless those crossing are obviously intent on committing harm. The only authority given to congress relating to immigration was to determine what constituted citizenship. Since it is allegedly supposed to protect our rights, it has no legal authority to demand identification or to detain us merely because we cross a border. We celebrate Ellis Island, but we shouldn’t. It was a detainment camp that violated the rights of everyone who entered even if they gladly accepted it. Many people died there unnecessarily.
Now before you get upset with me, I am not asserting that we don’t have an immigration problem. We do, but, the current system is so corrupt, some are considering further ruining the rights of Americans in order to solve the problems created by it. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed will either make things worse, or only treat the symptoms.
The issue of illegal immigration is a political minefield. There are many causes and therefore no one solution can resolve them. As Dr. Paul has said on multiple occasions, the first problem that has to be addressed is birthright citizenship. You can’t do that without replacing or amending the 14th amendment with something that repudiates Supreme Court decisions holding that rights are conferred by birthright citizenship.
The 14th amendment is an abomination as was the legal opinion of the Supreme Court that incented its creation. It isn’t terrible because it presumes to tell states that their citizens have rights. It doesn’t do that at all. It is terrible because it legitimizes the milestone Supreme Court decision, Scott v.Sanford. Justice Taney in that decision "discovered" a legal loophole. You see, in spite of the plain words of the constitution, Taney argued that "people" and "persons" really meant "citizen". Since there was no legal decree making people citizens by birth, Dred Scott, who was born in the U.S., had no rights. What Taney meant to say, was that Dred Scot, a black man, was not human.
In a better world, Congress would have impeached all of the Justices who supported that decision. Instead, they proposed an amendment legitimizing the decision though intending to remedy the injustice wrought by the decision. The Dred Scot decision has never been overturned. If you don’t believe me, read US v Verrdugo-Urquidez decided in 1990. The court claimed that "people" is a "term of art" meant to describe citizens. In other words, rights are conferred by citizenship.
To work and to travel internationally, you must prove to authorities that you are a citizen. This renders you guilty until you can prove your innocence. Due to other abominable laws and decisions, you are also forced to pay to educate, feed and care for citizens who are such by consequence rather than allegiance.
Healthcare is the most oft-cited expense lending to bad immigration policy. The charity hospitals, country doctors and house calls of the past are but a memory as are reasonable costs for healthcare. It wasn’t always so expensive. My father made ninety cents an hour in 1962. He had no health insurance and didn’t need it. When I was born, he was able to pay for the entire hospital bill, which included a 3 day stay and a battery of drugs and test, in cash.
By 1990, when I was 28, if you didn’t have insurance, you couldn’t pay for a hospital birth in cash unless you were very well-to-do. Multiply the cost of just one hospital birth today by the tens of thousands per year who come here just to do that, and you have the initial cost of birthright citizenship given to those who have no means.
States have recently sought ways to curtail the cost of illegal immigration. California passed a proposition some years back that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Essentially the court said that privileges can’t be denied anyone, including non-citizens. Too bad the court isn’t as generous with rights.
A law passed in Oklahoma, sponsored by State Senator Randy Terrill, "terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens."
Oklahoma is no longer "O.K." for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. "When you put everything together in context," he contends, "the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won't stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they're deported. And that's exactly what House Bill 1804 does."
Now, this may seem like a great idea. It’s certainly working to rid Oklahoma of inherently illegal people. A mass exodus of the work force in Oklahoma is currently taking place in advance of the law taking affect November, 1, 2007. Parts of this law deal with the problem, and parts simply trample on the rights of all people working and living in Oklahoma, not just those considered illegal.
The Oklahoma law legitimizes the idea that it is moral and just to compel a person to show his papers in order to earn a living. It also interferes with business owners and presumes to tell them who they may hire. Lastly, the law gives federal police powers to local authorities. A side effect of this law will be the ruination of Oklahoma’s economy.
The wages for unskilled labor will rise, but so will prices. In order to attract workers, assuming that there are enough people to fill those roles, businesses will have to raise wages and then prices to cover the margin.
But that’s not the worst thing that will happen. The worst is that the legislature of Oklahoma will view the reduction in health and welfare costs to the State as a surplus that they can spend elsewhere. It will not only ruin the economy, but will also expand government.
Dr. Paul hasn’t just offered a solution which seeks to treat a symptom. He has repeatedly pointed out that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy poses a hidden tax on citizens as well as non-citizens; particularly those in the middle and lower income brackets. By devaluing the currency through inflation, immigrants who come here to work can’t afford healthcare and education because the costs are so high. Then again, neither can a large number of us "legal" people.
Healthcare has enjoyed an attack from both monetary policy and government regulations, making anything more than a cold or flu a potentially bankrupting event.
Ron Paul’s proposed solutions to the immigration problem make the most sense. He isn’t suggesting we further encroach on the rights of individual citizens. Immigration is one of the reasons given by some politicians for the necessity of a national ID card but Dr. Paul argues convincingly that it is not needed.
He also hasn’t suggested that we immediately start deporting people. His call to end birthright citizenship and welfare incentives, along with a monetary policy which restores confidence and value to the currency, attacks the root cause of systemic abuse rather than the symptoms. However, this will have to be preceded by a fundamental shift in the view that our rights are granted by virtue of citizenship rather than birth.
If we don’t adopt Ron Paul’s suggestions, and instead adopt the solutions proposed by his challengers, being illegal will be the only option available to us to preserve our own rights and liberties.
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