Deviation From Immigration to Socialism

Socialism for the Uninformed

5/31/2016 - Thomas Sowell Townhall.com

Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.

While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.

With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.

The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist "exploitation," shouldn't it?

But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts -- such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.

Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.

When Senator Sanders cries, "The system is rigged!" no one asks, "Just what specifically does that mean?" or "What facts do you have to back that up?"

In 2015, the 400 richest people in the world had net losses of $19 billion. If they had rigged the system, surely they could have rigged it better than that.

But the very idea of subjecting their pet notions to the test of hard facts will probably not even occur to those who are cheering for socialism and for other bright ideas of the political left.

How many of the people who are demanding an increase in the minimum wage have ever bothered to check what actually happens when higher minimum wages are imposed? More often they just assume what is assumed by like-minded peers -- sometimes known as "everybody," with their assumptions being what "everybody knows."

Back in 1948, when inflation had rendered meaningless the minimum wage established a decade earlier, the unemployment rate among 16-17-year-old black males was under 10 percent. But after the minimum wage was raised repeatedly to keep up with inflation, the unemployment rate for black males that age was never under 30 percent for more than 20 consecutive years, from 1971 through 1994. In many of those years, the unemployment rate for black youngsters that age exceeded 40 percent and, for a couple of years, it exceeded 50 percent.

The damage is even greater than these statistics might suggest. Most low-wage jobs are entry-level jobs that young people move up out of, after acquiring work experience and a track record that makes them eligible for better jobs. But you can't move up the ladder if you don't get on the ladder.

The great promise of socialism is something for nothing. It is one of the signs of today's dumbed-down education that so many college students seem to think that the cost of their education should -- and will -- be paid by raising taxes on "the rich."

Here again, just a little check of the facts would reveal that higher tax rates on upper-income earners do not automatically translate into more tax revenue coming in to the government. Often high tax rates have led to less revenue than lower tax rates.

In a globalized economy, high tax rates may just lead investors to invest in other countries with lower tax rates. That means that jobs created by those investments will be overseas.

None of this is rocket science. But you do have to stop and think -- and that is what too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach their students to do.

Elites Prosper at Taxpayer Expense

Elites can Afford to Support Looser Immigration Policies

5/12/2016 - Victor Davis Hanson Townhall.com 

Support for, or opposition to, mass immigration is apparently a class issue, not an ethnic or racial issue. Elites more often support lenient immigration policies; the general public typically opposes them.

At the top of the list are Mexico's elites. Illegal immigration results in an estimated $25 billion sent back in remittances to Mexico each year. The Mexican government worries more about remittances, the country's No. 1 source of foreign exchange, than it does about its low-paid citizens who are in the U.S., scrimping to send money back home. Remittances also excuse the Mexican government from restructuring the economy or budgeting for anti-poverty programs.

Mexico sees the U.S. the way 19th-century elites in this country saw the American frontier: as a valuable escape hatch for the discontented and unhappy, who could flee rather than stay home and demand long-needed changes.

American employers in a number of industries -- construction, manufacturing, hospitality and others -- have long favored illegal immigration. Low-wage labor cuts costs: The larger the pool of undocumented immigrants, the less pressure to raise wages. That was why Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers in the 1970s occasionally patrolled the southern border in its vigilante-style "illegals campaign" to keep out undocumented immigrants while opposing guest worker programs.

Moreover, the additional social expense associated with millions of undocumented workers -- in rising health care, legal, education and law-enforcement costs -- is usually picked up by the public taxpayer, not by employers.

Ethnic elites also favor lax immigration policies. For all the caricatures of the old melting pot, millions of legal immigrants still rapidly assimilate, integrate and intermarry. Often within two generations of arrival, they blend indistinguishably into the general population and drop their hyphenated and accented nomenclature. But when immigration is mostly illegal, in great numbers and without ethnic diversity, assimilation stalls. Instead, a near-permanent pool of undocumented migrants offers a political opportunity for activists to provide them with collective representation.

If the borders were closed to illegal immigration, then being Hispanic would soon be analogous to being Italian-, Greek- or Portuguese-American in terms of having little prognostic value in predicting one's political outlook. The continual flow of indigent new arrivals distorts statistics on poverty and parity, prompting ethnic elites in politics, journalism and higher education to seek redress for perennial income and cultural imbalances. Offering affirmative action to a third-generation Hispanic-American who does not speak Spanish apparently is seen as one way to help thousands of recently arrived impoverished immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico, find parity.

High-income American elites likewise have largely favored illegal immigration for a variety of predicable reasons. The professional class likes having low-wage "help" to clean the house, cook meals, help take care of kids and elders, and tend the lawn. Such outsourcing usually is not affordable for the middle and lower classes.

Elites have ways of navigating around the downsides of illegal immigration. They can avoid crowded schools and low-income neighborhoods, and they can easily pay the higher taxes that can result from illegal immigration.

Support for lax immigration policies also offers psychological penance for essentially living a life of apartheid. An elite can avoid living in integrated neighborhoods or sending his children to diverse schools, but he can square that circle by voicing theoretical support for immigrant amnesty and sanctuary cities.

We see such hypocrisy from proponents of loosened immigration policies such as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Univision personality Jorge Ramos and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Who does not benefit from mass illegal immigration? Mostly the poor, minorities and the lower-middle class. They are not employers, but rather compete with undocumented immigrants for low-wage jobs. They usually clean their own houses and do their own yard work. They cannot afford to send their children to a different school when theirs becomes overcrowded. They cannot afford the increased taxes needed for social support of millions of new arrivals.

Donald Trump tried to demagogue illegal immigration along ethnic lines. But the issue is not where illegal immigrants come from or who they are, but rather their effect on the struggling working classes already here, comprising all ethnic and racial backgrounds.

Prune away the rhetoric and the issue becomes simple: Elites profit from high-volume illegal immigration, while most other U.S. citizens only support immigration when it is legal, measured and diverse.

The Judge Has Logical Questions

Who Answers for Government Lies?

5/19/2016 - Judge Andrew Napolitano Townhall.com

Here is a quick pop quiz. What happens if we lie to the government? What happens if the government lies to us? Does it matter who does the lying?

Last year, the Obama administration negotiated an agreement with the government of Iran permitting Iran to obtain certain materials for the construction of nuclear facilities. It also permitted the release of tens of billions of dollars in Iranian assets that had been held in U.S. banks and that the courts had frozen, and it lifted trade sanctions. In exchange, certain inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities can occur under certain circumstances.

During the course of the negotiations, many critics made many allegations about whether the Obama administration was telling the truth to Congress and to the American people.

Was there a secret side deal? The administration said no. Were we really negotiating with moderates in the Iranian government, as opposed to the hard-liners depicted in the American media? The administration said yes. Can U.N. or U.S. inspectors examine Iranian nuclear facilities without notice and at any time? The administration said yes.

It appears that this deal is an executive agreement between President Barack Obama and whatever faction he believes is running the government of Iran. That means that it will expire if not renewed at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, when the president's term ends.

It is not a treaty, because it was not ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, which the Constitution requires for treaties. Yet the Obama administration cut a deal with the Republican congressional leadership, unknown to the Constitution and unheard of in the modern era. That deal provided that the agreement would be valid unless two-thirds of those voting in both houses of Congress objected. They didn't.

Then last week, the president's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, Ben Rhodes, who managed the negotiations with Iran, told The New York Times that he lied when he spoke to Congress and the press about the very issues critics were complaining about. He defended his lies as necessary to dull irrational congressional fears of the Iranian government.

I am not addressing the merits of the deal, though I think that the more Iran is reaccepted into the culture of civilized nations the more economic freedom will come about for Iranians. And where there is economic freedom, personal liberties cannot be far behind.

I am addressing the issue of lying. Rhodes' interview set off a firestorm of criticism and "I told you so" critiques in Capitol Hill, and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee summoned him to explain his behavior. It wanted to know whether he told the truth to Congress and the public during the negotiations or he told the truth to The New York Times last week.

He apparently dreads answering that question, so he refused to appear and testify. One wonders how serious this congressional committee is, because it merely requested Rhodes' appearance; it did not subpoena him. A congressional subpoena has the force of law and requires either compliance or interference by a federal court. Rhodes' stated reason for not testifying is a claim of privilege.

What is a privilege? It is the ability under the law to hide the truth in order to preserve open communications. It is a judgment by lawmakers and judges that in certain narrowly defined circumstances, freedom of communication is a greater good than exposing the truth.

Hence the attorney/client and priest/penitent and physician/patient privileges have been written into the law so that people can freely tell their lawyers, priests and doctors what they need to tell them without fear that they will repeat what they have heard.

Executive privilege is the ability of the president and his aides to withhold from anyone testimony and documents that reflect military, diplomatic or sensitive national security secrets. This is the privilege that Rhodes has claimed.

Yet the defect in Rhodes' claim of privilege here is that he has waived it by speaking about the Iranian negotiations to The New York Times. Waiver -- the knowing and intentional giving up of a privilege or a right -- defeats the claim of privilege.

Thus, by speaking to the Times, Rhodes has admitted that the subject of his conversation -- the Iranian negotiations -- is not privileged. One cannot selectively assert executive privilege. Items are either privileged or not, and a privilege, once voluntarily lifted, cannot thereafter successfully be asserted.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee should subpoena Rhodes, as well as the Times reporter to whom he spoke, to determine where the truth lies.

It is a crime to lie to the government when communicating to it in an official manner. Just ask Martha Stewart. One cannot lawfully lie under oath or when signing a document one is sending to the government or when answering questions from government agents. Just ask Roger Clemens. Stated differently, if Rhodes told the FBI either what he told Congress or what he told The New York Times -- whichever version was untrue -- he would be exposed to indictment.

Ben Rhodes is one of the president's closest advisers. They often work together on a several-times-a-day basis. Could he have lied about this Iranian deal without the president's knowing it?

Does anyone care any longer that the government lies to the American people with impunity and prosecutes people when it thinks they have lied to it? Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government?

Sanctuary Cities = Lawless Government

Sanctuary City: Criminals Welcome

5/10/2016 - Debra J. Saunders Townhall.com

Last June, when he said he was running as a Republican for president, billionaire Donald Trump famously called out Mexico for sending "people that have lots of problems" across the border. Quoth the Donald: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Many were offended to hear Trump equate undocumented immigrants with dangerous criminals.

Yet the same thing is happening on the Left Coast. Tuesday the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a measure to reinforce a sanctuary city policy -- named "Due Process for All" and passed in 2013. On KQED's "Forum" on Monday, Supervisor John Avalos talked about the ordinance as protecting the undocumented immigrant community, when in fact the policy shields undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records. Like Trump, Avalos can't distinguish between undocumented and felonious.

The 2013 measure in question directed local law enforcement not to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the pending release of undocumented inmates from custody -- unless they committed a violent felony within the past seven years.

That policy shielded Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican national with seven felony convictions who had been deported five times. Rather than notify ICE, former Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi released Lopez-Sanchez, who later was charged in the July 1 murder of Kate Steinle, a San Francisco woman taking an evening stroll with her father on Pier 14. (Lopez-Sanchez has pleaded not guilty.) Because the shooting was so avoidable, it became a national story.

Steinle was not the first casualty of the city's sanctuary policies.

In 2008, Edwin Ramos, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, shot and killed Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16. A sanctuary city policy for minors, it turns out, had shielded Ramos from ICE after he was charged with gang-related assault in 2003 and attempted robbery in 2004.

In 2008, Mayor Gavin Newsom ended the ill-considered policy after The San Francisco Chronicle reported on its unintended effects. After Steinle's murder last year, however, City Hall dug in its heels and the board of supervisors refused to pass sensible fixes.

This year, however, newly elected Sheriff Vicki Hennessy tried to reform the policy by allowing deputies to inform ICE prior to the release of serious criminals -- those convicted of violent felonies within the last seven years (absent incarceration time), or three felony convictions from three separate incidents or two or more felony convictions for re-entering the United States after deportation. Two felony re-entries, not one? Three separate felonies? I say Hennessy is too easy. Avalos accused her of creating "a very wide funnel."

I asked Avalos if he thought people have a right to break immigration law. He answered, "The U.S. breaks international law all the time." He's angry at calls to reform the policy because of one "tragic" crime. Wrong. Steinle is not the first casualty of sanctuary city policies that protect repeat criminals. The Bolognas were. And if City Hall wants to provide shield violent offenders who otherwise would be deported, there will be more.

Remember F2F June 22, 2016

Can Trump Unify Party By Unifying Talk Radio on Immigration?

5/6/2016 - Joyce Kaufman Townhall.com

Saying that the Republican establishment has had rough seas during the 2016 presidential nominating process would be a little like saying the Titanic had a difficult maiden voyage. This campaign has been nothing short of a smack-down for the people and the ideology that has ruled the party in recent decades. Central to this epic repudiation on the part of the party’s base has been the establishment’s inability, or outright refusal, to address the voters’ legitimate concerns about America’s immigration crisis.

Not surprisingly, two GOP candidates emerged who broke with their party’s position on immigration. Both have supported the idea that immigration policy must serve some identifiable public interest and that the American people, not the people who have broken our laws or party mega donors, are the primary constituency for U.S. immigration policy.

If any approach to any issue has been a common denominator between Cruz and Trump it has been immigration.  And although American talk radio hosts have split their support more or less equally between the two candidates, concern about immigration is the common denominator among them.  This begs the question of whether Trump can or will capitalize on that shared concern to bolster his support with former Cruz supporters among this needed electronic constituency.

I’ll find out along with dozens of talk radio hosts from around the nation when I once again attend the Hold Their Feet to the Fire (F2F) radio row, an annual immigration town hall on the airwaves in Washington, D.C., staged by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). On June 22, some 50 of us will broadcast live from Capitol Hill while we debate immigration issues with ordinary citizens and government leaders.

Is Trump coming?  I really don’t know - all the candidates from both parties were invited - but since Trump started the conversation, it seems like a good idea for him to continue it at the event and potentially unify those of us who make a living unifying others.

I know why I’m coming. As the host of a daily talk radio program in the quintessential swing state of Florida, it has long been clear that the disruptive impact of our mindless and unenforced immigration policies is a source of great concern on the part of the people Republicans rely upon to win elections.

Day after day, I hear from people who have seen their jobs, their wages, their tax dollars, their children’s educations, and the safety of their communities sacrificed by immigration policies that arrogantly ignore their interests and concerns.

Significantly, this year’s event will coincide with the Supreme Court’s expected decision on United States v. Texas, the case brought by 26 state governors challenging the Obama administration’s attempt to grant de facto amnesty and work authorization to some 4.7 million illegal aliens simply by issuing a few policy memos.

Nothing better symbolizes the fecklessness of the Washington Republican establishment on immigration than this case. Despite unequivocal statements from just about every member of the Republican establishment that the president’s actions are unconstitutional, they have done nothing to prevent him from carrying out his executive actions. They did not challenge those actions in the courts, even though the Constitution gives Congress clear plenary authority over immigration policy. They did not block the president’s ability to use federal dollars to implement his policies, even though the power of the purse is Congress’s ultimate check on the Executive Branch.  In short, the Republican establishment has done precious little to protect the American people’s interest in immigration policy and their base is rejecting them.

F2F 2016 will reinforce the clear message that is being delivered at the polls: It is the American people’s immigration policy. The American people must never be forced to make concessions to the people who break our laws, or business interests that want to undermine American workers, in order to get their government to merely promise to enforce our laws in the future.

Those are unifying ideas not just for political considerations, but for the future of the nation.

Get Educated, Inspired, Involved, Participate to Save Our Republic

A Dark Time in America

5/3/2016 - Dennis Prager Townhall.com

As of tonight, we may know if Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential candidate. And, barring unforeseeable events, it is certain that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Those are two reasons -- of many, unfortunately -- why, other than the first years of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States as one country was in jeopardy, there has never been a darker time in American history.

The various major wars -- the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars -- were worse in terms of American lives lost.

The Great Depression was worse in economic terms.

There were more riots during the Vietnam War era.

But at no other time has there been as much pessimism -- valid pessimism, moreover -- about America's future as there is today.

Among the reasons are:

Every distinctive value on which America was founded is in jeopardy.

According to a Pew Research Center study, more and more young Americans do not believe in freedom of speech for what they deem hate speech. Forty percent of respondents ages 18 to 34 agreed that offensive statements should be outlawed.

According to a series of Harvard University polls, about 47 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 believe that food, shelter and health care "are a right that government should provide to those unable to afford them." That means that nearly half our young believe they have a legitimate claim on the labor and earnings of others for life's basic necessities.

More than half of 18- to 29-year-old Americans do not support capitalism, the source of the prosperity they enjoy, and the only economic system that has ever lifted mass numbers of people out of poverty.

When young Americans see pictures of the Founding Fathers, they do not see the great men that most Americans have seen throughout American history; they see white males who were affluent (now derisively labeled "privileged") and owned slaves.

The belief that certain fundamental rights are God-based -- a view held by every American founder and nearly all Americans throughout its history -- is reviled outside of conservative religious circles, and held by fewer and fewer Americans today.

The view that male and female are distinctive identities -- one of the few unquestioned foundational views of every society in history -- is being obliterated. Simply saying that one believes (all things being equal) a child does best starting out life with a married father and mother will ensure they'll be considered a "hater."

The ideas that America should be a melting pot, or that all Americans should identify as American, are now unutterable in educated company. In fact, many college campuses do not have an American flag on their campus because some students regard it as offensive and representational of imperialism and capitalism.

In addition, virtually every major institution is in decay or disarray.

Religious institutions, which, for most of American history, have been the most important institutions in everyday American life, are being rendered irrelevant. And a larger number of Americans, many more than ever before, do not identify with any religion.

The traditional family has become nothing more than one of many options open to Americans. For the first time in American history there are more unmarried women than married women. The number of adults age 34 and under who have never been married is nearing 50 percent. In recent years, data showed just 20 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 are wedded, compared to nearly 60 percent in 1960. Additionally, more than 40 percent of American births are to unmarried women. Among Hispanic women the percent is over 53, and among black women the rate is over 71 percent.

Universities (outside the natural sciences and mathematics), are intellectual frauds. In terms of ability to think clearly, they actually make most students dumber than before they entered college. As Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens wrote recently, "American academia is, by and large, idiotic."

National, state and city governments have no doubt largely engaged in Ponzi-scheme-like practices, racking up levels of debt that will crush the economy of the country sooner or later.

The size of the federal government, and its far-reaching meddling in and control over Americans' lives, is the very thing America was founded to avoid.

The arts are as fraudulent as academia. Artistic standards have been destroyed. In music, art and architecture, nonsense and ugliness have replaced the pursuit of meaning, edification and beauty. The scatological have replaced the noble.

And now there's Clinton and Trump. Nothing more clearly exemplifies the dark time in which we are living than this political version of Sophie's choice.

I will not end on a happy note because there isn't one; but neither will I despair.

One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do, and because America remains, as Lincoln said, "the last best hope of earth."