With Friends Like This...

I wonder if the Obama campaign will comment on this one.

What started out as a typical, Left Coast wingnut-turned-overpass jumper protesting the Iraq War turned into a HUGE traffic snafu. Highway 101 was shut down in both directions. In case you're not local or are unfamiliar with California's Central Coast, Highway 101 is THE major highway in the area. If you want to get to any of the interstate highways from here, you have to use U.S. 101 at some point. At first, I only heard about it because some of my co-workers were stranded in the gridlock. Apparently, this was a big enough deal that it made the news on KFI 640 AM in Los Angeles (which is roughly 2 1/2 hours away).

This leads me to ask a few questions:

1) Does this guy know something that we don't? Is Obama in such dire straits that supporters have begun to resort to suicide, rather than entertain the possibility of living in an America with President McCain?

2) Could this possibly be a publicity stunt? It could be an emotional plea for for us to vote for Obama, lest we see some of our neighbors, friends, and colleagues kill themselves.

Maybe this was nothing more than a case of some guy going off his meds. At any rate, I can't help but notice that you don't hear too much about right-wing lunatics threatening to jump off freeway overpasses unless they get a yard sign.

Price Check!

First off, I would like to apologize for my relative silence during this election cycle. My life beyond the blogosphere was chock-full of tasks and issues for me to address (busy at work, even busier social life, buying a house). Secondly, pretty much anything that I had to say was being said by those with voices bigger and more widely heard than mine. Now, on to the fun stuff...

Apparently, B. Hussein Obama and Joe Biden need to get someone to give them a price check on achieving the American Dream. One day, Obama is telling us that $250,000 a year is the height of achievement in the United States. Then, not more than a month later Obama sets the price at $200,000 a year. Right on the heels of that, his running mate lowers the bar to $150,000 a year. Clearly, achievement has a salary cap (and it's well below the MLB salary cap).

As a twenty-something, college-educated, single woman, I find the idea of limiting achievement repugnant. I thought the whole point of going through college, saving to buy a house, and working hard at my choosen career is so that I don't need to have the government or anyone else support me. I make a comfortable salary as an engineer (between $50,000 and $75,000), but I'm not content to just go on making the same amount of money throughout my career. I want to advance in my career and be compensated for taking on more responsibilities. It would be nice to have more disposable income so I can travel, donate more to the charities of my choosing (California's welfare programs don't count as a charity), and treat friends and family to a night out. I currently contribute to a 401(k) and would like to start putting money away in an IRA. After all, I don't plan on working forever.

I'm sure that I could do all of that and more on a $150,000 annual salary, but why should I be limited? Let's say that I decide to start a business with a couple of employees, and I clear $500,000 in gross income. My business would, therefore, meet the Obama-Biden definition of "rich". Keep in mind, that is gross income. If my business has employees, I'm required to pay them, payroll taxes, worker's compensation, and other associated overhead costs of having employees. The Obama-Biden answer to my complaint is, "Well, if you hire more employees, we'll give you a $3000 tax credit for each new employee." I'm not sure to which small businesses they've been talking, but $3000 would barely cover the cost of processing the new hire paperwork. Besides that, who starts a business with an upper limit on revenue? That's like playing a football game, but telling your team that they can only score 14 points (even if the other team racks up 51).

Isn't the whole point of America that the only limits we have are the ones that we place on ourselves? The truth is, the American Dream is priceless and should be without limitations. When success and achievement are penalized, what incentive is there for people to excel? Why would someone want to strive for success in their career or financial well-being if the government is going to come along and "spread the wealth around"? Why not wait around for someone else to be the sucker and put in all the hard work, while you kick back and wait to reap the benefits? Eventually, the golden goose is going to quit laying eggs and people will just quit working altogether...including the box boys (and girls) at the grocery store.

Hat tip to Christina, who provides some video links of the laughable-if-it-weren't-true.

Shall We Dance?

This past Sunday, the following interview took place on ABC's "This Week". Please note, that George Stephonopoulos gives her multiple opportunities to back out of the hole that she's digging for herself.



She refers to the rebellion on the Hill (GOP representatives remaining on the floor, in the dark, without C-SPAN cameras) to debate lifting the ban on drilling for oil as "the war dance of the hand maidens of the oil companies". Meanwhile, she and others who oppose drilling and exploration on our own territory are portrayed as stewards of the planet, defending it from evil, destructive human beings. This is in spite of the fact that the simple act of drilling for oil would actually create jobs and stimulate the economy. How noble and principled Speaker Pelosi is to sacrifice the livelihoods of others to save the planet. Or is she?

Here's the latest from politico.com, regarding the re-election strategy that Speaker Pelosi has for representatives who are at-risk of losing their seats. She has accused conservatives in Congress of being "regional" in their support of drilling, implying that they are selfish for putting the concerns of their constituents ahead of the environmentalists' agenda. It seems perfectly acceptable, however, for Democrats to support off-shore drilling if it helps them keep their power in Congress.

I wonder if Speaker Pelosi's dance card is full.

Deportation: The Economic Boogieman (or, Why I Don’t Get My News from MSN)

This article is a shining example of why I refuse to watch “P-MSNBC” or take any MSN news article without the benefit of an entire salt shaker. To demonstrate how biased and just plain wrong this article is here is a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal (the italicized text is mine).

At least 12 million illegal immigrants live in the U.S. Most pick crops, wash dishes, build houses, cut lawns and do other jobs for between $6 and $15 an hour. They make up about 5% of the total U.S. work force. But …What if we threw them all out?

Lettuce and strawberries would rot in the fields. Dirty dishes would pile up in restaurants. Thousands of farmers and builders would go bust. Predator aircraft drones would prowl the Mexican border. And chunks of Los Angeles and Houston would look like ghost towns. (The assumption that increased border security will specifically target Mexicans features prominently in this article. We’re supposed to pretend that: 1) all aliens entering this country are from Mexico, 2) only Hispanics want to come to the USA, and 3) we haven’t actually captured Arabs impersonating Mexicans at border crossings. Also, completely disregard that we do have another border to our north, which if I am not mistaken provided the point of entry for several 9/11 hijackers.)

The biggest losers would be middle-class families with two working parents, living in high-immigrant states such as California, Texas, Florida or New York. Why? They would pay more for food, housing, entertainment and child care as a shortage of low-skilled workers drove up some wages, and therefore, some prices. Meantime, their own pay would remain the same. (Their pay might stay the same, but what about the need for less tax money to go to things like welfare, education, and subsidized healthcare? Perhaps with less withholdings in taxes, a middle-class family would not require two paychecks to make it in suburbia. One parent at home = free child care) What's more, the ripple effect of thousands of businesses shrinking or closing for lack of staff might put one of the parents out of a job. Not to mention the garbage collection going to pot and no one to polish the missus' nails.

The winners, for a change, would be the low-skilled unemployed, living just about anywhere -- if they were willing to move. Of the 12 million illegal immigrants, about 8 million are employed, mostly in low-skill jobs. The U.S., meantime, has about 22 million less-educated jobless adults, many of them blacks and legalized Hispanics, according to a 2008 report from the Center for Immigration Studies, a research group based in Washington, D.C. (And this is a bad thing? I thought we wanted to have a country where even the uneducated, low-skilled segment of our population could afford a living. Isn’t that the rallying cry of the amnesty crowd? After all, non-citizens theoretically cannot get a job that pays a living wage.)

Economists say if these people agreed to bone meat or install insulation, they could earn 6% to 10% more than the deported workers, as wages rose to lure new workers. That could mean $18,000 to $30,000 in pay a year. And the economy? Short term, the effect of lost manpower and spending by illegal immigrants would be "devastating" or cause "some temporary dislocation," depending on whom you ask.

Are Americans willing to do these jobs?

Ray Perryman, the president of The Perryman Group, an economic analysis firm in Waco, Texas, calculates our $14 trillion economy would suffer $652 billion in lost output -- a dramatic 4.6% slice off gross domestic product. He predicts tens of thousands of businesses would close. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, predicts perhaps a 1% slip in GDP. (Please note that any other non-profit policy group is simply referred to as a “research group”. The Immigration Policy Center, later referenced in this article, is not referred to as an “amnesty think tank”.)

Why the big difference in opinion? Because people are hard to predict. Just how quickly would Americans fill the vacated jobs? And at what pay rate? Perryman points to Texas, where he says there are more than 1 million illegal workers, but only 450,000 unemployed residents. "If you do the math, it just doesn't work," he says. He doubts that many needy Virginians would move to Texas for often-grueling, low-paying jobs. (How has Perryman defined “unemployed residents”? If it is only individuals over the age of 18 who are seeking full-time employment, then his numbers are skewed. What about high school and college students who are only looking for part-time work…or not at all?)

Rector disagrees. He says it would take time for "Cousin Fred" in Texas to phone up his jobless mates in Virginia, but, "There are a lot of people who work for less than $20,000 a year." And they would move for a job.

Still, until the unemployed did jump in their Hyundais to head south, several industries in high-immigrant states would have a terrible time. Some are listed below. The figures in parentheses show the percentage of illegal workers in each industry's work force, as calculated by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. The figures are nationwide; in some localities, they would be far higher.

• Home help (21%): Los Angeles would still have its sunshine, but there'd be far fewer helping hands to clean floors, cook dinner and shush the kids. Not to mention in New York, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Miami. Some working parents might have to quit their jobs to care for the kids or break the family piggy bank to attract a housekeeper from a neighbor. (Has anyone ever heard of hiring a teenager to do the yard work or sit with the kids? How about cleaning up your own mess? I grew up in southern California without the benefit of a housekeeper, nanny, or cabana boy. Plus, household chores are a great way to pry you or your kids away from the X-Box.)
  
• Farming (13%): "Agriculture would come to a screeching halt," says Nicole Rothfleisch, executive director of the Imperial County Farm Bureau in Southern California. She says El Centro, the county seat, has the highest unemployment in the state (18%). But farmers can never find enough local help. (Obviously, it pays better to be on welfare in Imperial County). Pay is $9 an hour, and the summer temperatures can hit 110 degrees. The locals, she says, "want cushy jobs with air conditioning." (Here’s a tip: Can’t stand the heat? Leave the Imperial Valley!) Economists say many farmers would go broke as billions of dollars' worth of crops lay unpicked. Farms would merge and switch to crops that can be picked mechanically, like round lettuce or oranges used solely for juice. (Why can’t the state prison system contract out inmates to work in the fields? We have them picking up trash on the highways and working in the state parks clearing brush and rehabilitating hiking trails.)
  
• Food manufacturing (14%): The big meatpacking and poultry-processing plants would slash production, increase wages (now $12 an hour in Texas) and send managers in helicopters to scour the countryside for workers. In 2006, when six plants of meatpacker Swift & Co. were raided for illegal workers, the company began offering $1,500 bonuses to Burmese refugees in Texas for each friend or relative they could recruit. (As someone who grew up around livestock, I can attest that meatpacking is messy work. I can also say that knowing a good butcher comes in handy when you’re planning a large family gathering. I would rather see higher prices in the grocery store and know that my money is going to stay in this country’s economy, not get sent to the homeland of whoever is getting paid less than minimum wage.)
  
• Construction (12%): If it looks bad now, imagine an economy where homebuilding is really crushed, says Rick Montelongo, owner of a building and remodeling company in San Antonio. "It would be a huge blow," he says. Workers' wages, which make up 30% of the cost of building a home, would have to rise "substantially," he says. That would make it more expensive to build new homes, resulting in even fewer sales for an industry already experiencing a sharp downturn. (Why do we have to all have brand-new homes? Why can’t people just settle in older housing tracts that have been revamped? It surely would cut down or eliminate urban sprawl. Isn’t the whole idea of the housing tract with a postage stamp for a backyard? Besides, there is always going to be people that want a custom built home, and will pay whatever it takes to get it.)
  
• Hotels and restaurants (11%): There'd be a triple whammy here. Latino staff and customers would both be lost, while the price of fresh food would be driven up by shortages. (I live in a community where more than half of the population is made up of Hispanics working in the ag industry. I don’t see them going to the local fine dining or family style restaurants. Where do they go out to eat? The taquerias and Little Caesar’s for the 2 for 1 cheese pizzas. Again, when it comes to wait staff, hire part-timers. We have no shortage of teenagers that could use some character-building.) Distraught restaurant owners would pin up job ads at colleges, when they weren't up to their elbows in dish soap. The billions of dollars spent annually by illegal immigrants would disappear, bad news for small restaurateurs and fast-food joints. (Where did this figure come from? There is minimal economic stimulation coming from the illegal immigrant population. For starters, many of them live in the same house with more than one family. This is to save money to send back to their home country. Then there’s the added bonus of illegals using fake IDs to obtain welfare benefits because their employers pay less than minimum wage.) But over time, the industry would adapt. Self-service cafés would pop up. And more restaurants would serve chicken parmesan prepared in a factory and warmed up in a microwave. Yum. (There were no restaurants before the 20th century? Aren’t their any aspiring Emerils out there that want to learn the restaurant business from the ground up?)

As for the middle-class family in California or Texas, there would be some upside. Getting Johnny into the emergency room when he broke his arm would be easier with fewer uninsured Hispanics crowding the lobby. (How about when you’re appendix has burst and you’re on the brink of death? It’s called an emergency room for a reason! It’s not the place to go if you have the sniffles.)

Some schools might even offer smaller classes. Steven Camarota, the research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, calculates that 3.3 million children, or 6% of school kids, have at least one undocumented parent. It costs about $10,000 per year to educate a child. So if all these kids left the U.S., too, it'd save $33 billion, Camarota says. "It could take a lot of pressure off the school system," he adds. Of course, some near-empty schools would have to close. (The last time I checked, people are still having babies. Our population growth hasn’t exactly come to a halt. Near-empty schools, indeed.)

What about taxes? Would the average American family get any relief? That's hotly debated. Camarota reckoned in 2004 that the federal government would save $10 billion net a year if all illegal immigrants were expelled. That's the difference between what the illegal workers pay in income and payroll tax and what they and their kids collect in federal benefits. (What payroll tax? If you don’t have a Social Security number, how does the government collect taxes from you? The whole reason that illegal aliens get hired is because they are willing to work for less and their employers don’t have to pay into things like Social Security and Medicare.) However, some economists insist that just the opposite is true. (And their insistence is based on what? Because they are the economists and they say so? Sorry, the “I’m the Mom” defense quit working on me when I was six.)

At the state level, there's more agreement. Places such as Arizona, Texas, California and Nevada, which fork out billions for education and health care, would probably be ahead -- though not by a lot overall. So, American family tax relief? Maybe a little. (It would be a whole lot more if the afore-mentioned states stuck to their budgets and didn’t find new ways to spend tax money each year.)

And then there's the neighborhood. Critics of lax immigration policies say that drug running, traffic accidents and crime would go down with the illegal immigrants gone. But The Immigration Policy Center, a Washington research group, argues that studies show that immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes or to end up behind bars than native-born Americans. (This number does not include the “anchor babies”, the native-born children of illegal immigrant parents. Overwhelming numbers of criminals in our prison systems are either illegal immigrants or the children of illegal immigrants. These first-generation Americans are not brought up to assimilate into our society. They are raised to identify with the sub-culture of illegal immigrants.) The debate goes on.

How likely is it that this will happen? Politically, it's highly unlikely. Logistically, it would be a nightmare. (So we can track a Canadian-born cow with Mad Cow Disease or a guy who cheats the IRS a couple hundred bucks, but we can't find out who's here illegally?) Although polls show that most Americans want stronger border enforcement, deporting the illegal immigrants already here is not popular. A CBS News poll found 33% of Americans favored deportation, while 62% preferred offering legal status. In a Gallup poll, 13% favored deportation and 78% favored offering citizenship. (Polls are meaningless unless one knows how the questions were worded or how the sampling was done.) Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama leans toward deportation.

Emphasis now is on deterrence, which is proving costly. Estimates for the construction of a 15-foot-high double fence between the U.S. and Mexico range from $1 million to as much as $70 million per mile. The border is 2,000 miles long. (This is the biggest canard of them all. The Department of Homeland Security has already allocated the funds for the construction of the border fence. Why is it not yet done? Pro-amnesty groups have the enviro-wackos on their side, screaming about affecting environmentally sensitive wilderness. This is in spite of the fact that illegals camp out in these same sensitive areas, leaving trash and destroying wildlife along the way. The cost of building a secured border pales in comparison to the amount of extra money paid out in welfare benefits, inmate housing, law enforcement, judicial proceedings, and education.)

The blatant disregard for facts, impartiality, and common sense leads me to conclude that does Ms. Skeel have an agenda: insult the intelligence of her readers and portray anyone in favor of securing our borders as reactionary, xenophobic buffoons. She excels at the former and fails miserably at the latter.

Give Him the Paddles! STAT!

MY parents told me about Mr. Common Sense early in my life and told me I would do well to call on him when making decisions. It seems he was always around in my early years but less and less as time passed by. Today I read his obituary. Please join me in a moment of silence in remembrance, for Common Sense had served us all so well for so many generations.

Obituary for Common Sense

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn't always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Aspirin, sun lotion or a sticky plaster to a student, but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar can sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason. He is survived by three stepbrothers; I Know my Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I'm a Victim.

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Hat tip to...Mom!