RealCurrents

With all the criticism of George W. Bush and Republicans in general, I think we need to sort out a few basic aspects of our current mess so we can then, hopefully, make intelligent changes.

In my view, Republicans (in which I include myself, since I generally vote that way) have two basic problems:

1. Bush’s administration has been hijacked by war-hawk NeoCons, the first evidence of which appeared to be his picking Dick Cheney (seemingly out of nowhere, considering Wyoming isn’t a big state) to be his running mate.

As a result, early philosophical drivers of Bush policy, such as Marvin Olasky’s notion of “compassionate conservatism“, a foreign policy that refrained from “nation building”, and in general a more limited federal government, gradually gave in to the NeoCon urge to use power whenever possible, wherever possible.

Of course, the dam broke after 9/11, an event which may well have been given too much import in re-shaping U.S. foreign and domestic policy. In any case, the war-hawk NeoCons were firmly behind the wheel after that, and within a year were openly maneuvering to invade Iraq.

2. The near-complete failure of the rest of Republicans to make a serious effort to reclaim their party from the war-hawk NeoCons.

As I wrote before, despite Bush’s obvious failings, I put more blame on the Congress, for largely abdicating its responsibilities: “the Republican Congress … has failed to fulfill two of its primary duties: providing a check on the Executive Branch and controlling spending.”

So, two basic problems: the NeoCon takeover of the Bush administration, and the failure of the rest of us Republicans to counter it. With these in mind, it’s time for someone to finally state what’s plainly obvious, at least to any non-NeoCon in the Republican camp:

War-hawk NeoConservatives do NOT represent the views of all or anywhere near a majority of Republicans, nor are they legitimate heirs of Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

Through most of my teen years, I would hear Ronald Reagan in the morning, giving his radio address outlining his views, and no one’s going to convince me that his vision of personal responsibility and freedom, with limited government, has anything in common with the imperialist, police-state policies promoted by the war-hawk NeoCons.

The Republicans lost control of Congress for the simple reason that they failed to do their job. They completely failed to control spending, they failed to rein in government, and one by one those opposed to the invasion of Iraq knuckled under, I guess swayed by the argument, “We’re in a ‘war on terror‘, you just have to trust us.” Well, it’s amazing that the Bush administration still seems to be trying to use that argument. It shows how out of touch they really are.

As far as Bush’s failings go, I think Lee Iacocca hits the nail on the head in his new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Iacocca gives 9 “C’s” of leadership, and notes that Bush dismally fails on the very first one: Curiosity.

George W. Bush has a lot of good, even great, qualities, and I’m sure most Republicans, including myself, want to continue supporting him, but he has GOT to develop both a much greater interest in what is going on, and multiple alternative channels of information. As someone once said, a leader must use the chain of command to issue orders, but can NEVER depend on the chain of command for information.

As for other Republican politicians and candidates, I hope they will not abandon Bush, but will finally begin to demand accountability (and fiscal responsibility) from his administration.

Obviously, the folks Republicans DO need to be abandoning, and driving from the party, are the war-hawk NeoCons, who haven’t got a clue what terms like “limited government”, “Constitution”, “separation of powers”, and “conservative” really mean.

Sadly, if this mess continues much longer, us conservatives will have to come up with a new name for ourselves, lest people think we’re in favor of torture, abolishing the Geneva Convention, pre-emptive war, and all the other nonsense (evil) that’s been foisted upon us by these “Neo-Conservatives”, who seem to think the solution to every problem is the exercise of more government power.

First of all, in case anyone’s looking for it, here’s the official details on the IRS’ reasons for making April 17th the national deadline for filing your personal income taxes this year. It’s certainly also a good time to be thinking about how we could improve the system, something we all agree needs to be done, but can’t seem to agree how.

Of course, when you really get down to details, I’m not sure any of us quite knows quite what kind of tax system we’d prefer, but there are some basic qualities we could probably agree on. We need a system that no longer penalizes American business competitiveness, we need a simpler system (need I say more?), and we need a system that encourages - or at least doesn’t penalize - savings and various forms of investment and capital formation.

While a lot of conservatives might not agree on this last point, I think we also need a system that is modestly progressive, i.e. that gives a break to the poorest members of society. Even if you don’t agree with this philosophically, there is certainly a public interest in seeing these folks succeed financially, rather than linger on welfare rolls.

I don’t know all the specifics of the FairTax Plan, but this morning Houston City Councilman Michael Berry had Americans for Fair Taxation’s David C. Polyansky on, discussing this proposal. Here’s a summary taken from their website:

“The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.

The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.

The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. …”

In other words, the FairTax plan would be based on consumption, not income or savings, so if you made a lot of money but lived frugally, saving and investing what you made - and so creating jobs and wealth - then you wouldn’t get taxed that badly. On the other hand, if you wanted to live like the robber barons, then you’d pay considerable tax - 23% (plus state sales tax, I presume) - but you wouldn’t have to hire an army of accountants and lawyers, nor would you need to worry about estate taxes. That last part alone would probably save wealthy folks enough to where many would gladly pay the 23% on consumption in order to have more financial flexibility.

Of course, I don’t know how they come up with these numbers, but that 23% would apparently include all Social Security and Medicare taxes, and since it’s a straight number, it would be easy to predict the tax impact of any transaction and, like sales taxes, the amount would apparently only be levied on the final purchase, so there wouldn’t be a bunch of “built-in” taxes that add to the cost of goods. While the combined federal and state tax would be about 30%, twice the European VAT, if it had a downward impact on inflation - and interest rates - it might prove a bargain for these reasons as well, without having the regressive characteristics for which value-added taxes have been criticized.

The FairTax Plan, which currently has about 60 mostly Republican co-sponsors in Congress, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, is reportedly most strongly opposed by Washington lobbyists and some Congressmen in powerful committees, who would lose a lot of influence were it to pass. Perhaps this is the best reason of all for supporting it.

The FairTax would basically be a 23% federal sales tax on everything, that would be balanced by a “prebate” that would rebate the tax burden that would be paid by a family living at the poverty level. So as I understand it, you’d only be paying this consumption tax on purchases above the poverty level.

Moving to a consumption tax is key, because this would put our industries on a much more competitive basis with those of other countries. Right now, in Texas at least (I know some states are different), if you buy a $100,000 home, you have to pay property tax, on the order of 2.5%, every year on that home, which is made in America, of course. On the other hand, if you buy a $100,000 car imported from Germany, England, or wherever, you generally don’t have to pay this tax every year. But if you you buy a $100,000 aircraft made in Wichita, Kansas, you do!

Of course, this is property, not income tax, but it’s just one glaring example of how our system in some many subtle ways (double taxation of overseas earnings is another) rewards importers over domestic industries. A consumption tax would lower the effective cost of our goods overseas and make our manufacturing, agricultural, and other industries more competitive, while at the same time likely doing more to improve conservation of resources and protection of the environment than a lot of other measures would.

While folks are busy fretting about all the terrible things that might happen in Washington this year with a new Democrat-led Congress, Americans might need to keep a lot closer eye on their state and local politics as well. Is it just me, or does it seem that politicians are busier than usual proposing all kinds of odd-ball laws? I saw a report today that someone in New York was proposing a law banning listening to iPods while crossing the street! If legislators have this much time on their hands, they ought not meet so often.

Here in Texas, where the biennial legislative session is a notoriously short 140 days, this shouldn’t be a problem, yet I’m more concerned than usual this year. I must admit I don’t keep very close tabs on Texas state politics in Austin; the general news coverage is far from adequate and usually focusses on just a few bills. Back before the internet really caught on, there used to be an organization, the Texas Grassroots Coalition, run by Austin attorney/CPA Adrian van Zelfden, that did a great job of putting out information, especially during legislative sessions and before primaries. Perhaps nowadays with the many blogs there is something equivalent, but I have yet to discover it.

Despite the information gap, the maneuverings of the past few weeks have been enough to get the attention of even casual observers, whereas, I guess, even the astute were caught off guard by Governor Rick Perry’s draconian power grab last Friday, when he issued Executive Order RP65 mandating the HPV vaccination of all 11-12 year-old girls in the state.

There are so many things wrong with both the scientific/medical and political aspects of Perry’s action that I will leave this to others, or at least to another post. David Watts, Jr. has started a helpful blog, Overturn RP65, to track developments regarding this issue.

Besides that mess and its threats to our civil liberties, not to mention our constitutional form of government, there’s the general budget situation in Austin, and the huge surplus, which Perry, among others, hopes to spend, but ought to by and large be handed back to the citizens of Texas through tax cuts. This will be a huge fight, I’m sure, because all these billions of taxpayer dollars floating around are just asking for trouble.

In light of the very favorable budget situation, it seems awfully curious to me that Republicans are so busy trying to raise extra cash. Perry’s idea of selling the lottery, unsettling at best even for those of us who oppose state-sponsored gambling, is indefensible with so much surplus already floating around. As ususal there’s various efforts, that I haven’t managed to keep track of, to legalize additional gambling and “use the money for education”, a phrase which some political hack might as well convert to newspeak since we hear it so constantly.

Besides these, there’s the Republicans’ push to privatize new state highway construction. This is one of those ideas that sounds “conservative”, but really is just a different can of worms. Texas has had one of the best highway systems for a long time, especially considering the size of this state, and more public toll roads may well be worthwhile. Private toll roads, on the other hand, would turn the economics of highway construction and repair - and property taxation - on its head. Foreign-owned private toll roads, which have limited exits and which don’t convert to free roads once paid off, are a very bad idea.

In general, it seems state Republicans are increasingly looking for assets to sell, or otherwise mesmerized by big projects to fund, which is making a mockery of the term “conservative”. Since just about every candidate running in Texas these days boasts about how they are a conservative, a little fiscal discipline would sure be refreshing.

With their unbridled willingness to spend money and start new projects, the rush to start war in Iraq, and potentially elsewhere, even while threatening the rest of the world, I can’t help but wonder if many Republican office-holders who call themselves such even understand the meaning of the term “conservative”.

Considering how upset a lot of folks are over RP65, and the disappointments with the free-spending Republican Congress of recent years, I don’t know how much more of this Texas conservatives can take. If our legislators in Austin don’t think real hard before spending Texans’ money, they may well ensure that the 2008 primary gets very interesting.

Today is Election Day in the U.S., and as good a time as any I guess to comment on the odd state of politics in this country. This morning I found myself trying to motivate my 18 year old daughter to vote. Obviously I’d like her to listen to my advice on how to vote, but I’m really more concerned that she learns both to value the right to vote and to take her duty to participate in the process seriously.

She says that she really isn’t interested in politics and so doesn’t know who to vote for. I can’t really blame her; the fact is, politics attracts a lot of goofball or even downright nasty people.

And that’s really the point that began crystallizing in my thoughts this morning as we talked. As voters, our main goal must be to play defense, not offense, to keep the really bad folks from gaining the reins of power.

Every generation seems to produce a new crop of political idealists who think they can solve a bunch of the world’s problems through politics. Of course, in my generation this was the “Christian right”, which swept Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980. A lot of these folks got disillusioned early on, when Reagan appointed moderates or liberals to many posts (such as the Dept. of Education, which he had vowed to abolish) and kept a hands-off management style that let them work against his stated agenda.

My church seems to have a fair assortment of folks like this, some of whom apparently don’t even vote any more. I guess anyone could understand their disillusionment with politics, but I think we need to grasp that it’s much more important to vote against a bad candidate than to find a good one to vote for. Nearly all candidates will disappoint, but then we shouldn’t be expecting so much out of government to begin with.

When I was a child, it seemed that whenever someone was asked who they were voting for, the standard answer was “for the lesser of two evils”. I never much liked that answer, but everyone understood that was pretty much the way it was with politics.

As David Kuo’s recent book Tempting Faith (of which I’ve read only a little) warns, I think we need to move away from the idealism and get back to that more realist sort of mindset about politics.

Actually, if you look at the way the recent national elections have turned out, the Republicans’ closing the gap in the weeks leading up to the vote can probably be explained by this way of thinking. Before the election, people are dissatisfied and generally unhappy a lot of times with the folks in power, because they usually are disappointed in various ways. However, as Election Day nears, they start thinking more in terms of whether the alternative would be any better, and if the other party’s candidate(s) look worse, will move back toward the incumbents.

In 2004, I think the courts were the issue that really drove a lot of conservatives and moderates to end up voting Republican, as concerns have continued to grow that the judiciary is getting out of control. Osama’s message just weeks before the election also likely encouraged a lot of folks to vote for Bush. This year, while Osama has, notably, remained very quiet, the driving issue for a lot of folks, the perceived “greater of two evils”, is keeping very liberal Democrats from gaining control of Congress and its committees.

John Kerry’s recent remarks have added fuel to the fire by rekindling concerns of Democrats being weak on defense and unsupportive of the military.

It’s clear that a lot of folks are upset with the Republicans’ leadership of recent years. I guess most liberals and moderates are mainly upset with Bush, who certainly hasn’t listened enough, but I think most conservative Republicans are almost as upset with the Republican Congress, which has failed to fulfill two of its primary duties: providing a check on the Executive Branch and controlling spending.

In my view, the bigger failure has been with Congress, not Bush, because Congress has largely abdicated its responsibilities. This is why we haven’t, as I’ve noted before, had a real debate about our strategy and long-term goals with Iraq and the war on terror. The Republicans in Congress have pretty much given in to Bush on foreign policy, when it’s clearly not his area of strength. At the same time, spending has been out of control.

Nevertheless, while it’s clear a lot of conservative Republicans are fed up, the Democrats have clung so far to the left that the thought of their running things is genuinely scary to a lot of folks.

The problem seems to be that the Democrats remain beholden to the most liberal part of their base, so that they refuse to consider, for example, even quite modest restrictions on abortion. They seem unwilling to sincerely acknowledge even the most general, widely-held concerns about the erosion of moral values.

In what is an amazing revelation if true, Kuo asserts in his book that Tipper Gore, after championing one of the few family values efforts the Democrats have mustered, had to go to Hollywood, when her husband was nominated for President, and repent for her (bi-partisan) campaign to put warning labels on music whose lyrics advocate killing cops and other nasty stuff.

If this is the real Democratic Party, one that must kow-tow to the most extreme members of NARAL or the Hollywood elite, then they really don’t deserve to run this country. Maybe this isn’t the case, but the Democrats certainly could do a lot better job of making themselves a mainstream party, because there’s a lot of us, no matter how frustrated we are with the Republicans, who really don’t have anyone else to vote for, but certainly have a clear notion of who we’re voting against.

Business Week has a disturbing article in the May 29th issue about how Exxon Mobil, flush with earnings larger than the GDPs of many countries, has apparently decided simply not to fund a projected $11.2 billion pension liability. This bothers me for a lot of reasons, but most of all because it’s such an outlandishly large example of a flawed mindset that is found today throughout our society, and even more so in the analytical world of finance.

It seems that setting something aside for a rainy day just isn’t “smart” enough for the highly-trained MBA types. Of course, they want someone to hold reserves, but not them. So instead of taking a small portion of Exxon Mobil’s earnings and getting the pension fund ship-shape, I guess the bean-counters would rather use that money to make money, since that would be the “smart” thing to do. Then, if down the road things don’t go so well, they can let their employees and the government - taxpayers - take the hit.

It used to be that the strong, responsible entities in society were expected to hold reserves, but since there is inevitably an opportunity cost involved, nowadays everyone wants someone else to be the one holding financial reserves, inventory, or whatever. Even many governments (e.g. the U.K.) and the International Monetary Fund seem to be souring on the notion of holding gold reserves. Amazingly, the Clinton administration’s manipulation of U.S. gold holdings in the 1990s still remains largely obscure, whether for lack of curious journalists or lack of public interest, I don’t know.

The point is that in the real world, reserves and margin, i.e. “unused” assets, serve a purpose. They provide stability and buffers that guard against damage. While it’s bad enough that in our instant gratification culture many have lost a grasp of this, it’s particularly disturbing that somewhere in their extensive education, those who ought to know best - highly-analytical financial types - also seem to lose an appreciation for the essential role of reserves.

Besides artificial lights and artificial foods, we also live in a world with a lot of artificial economics. Even folks who work in a factory are generally very removed, economically, from the actual production process. By this I mean that they have become accustomed to getting a paycheck, usually the same amount, every two weeks, which is a total fiction when it comes to how things are produced. Just as we have become used to having light, day or night, we have come to expect income streams to be uniform.

We have also become comfortable with increasingly artificial markets, such as those for complex derivatives transactions. Yet there are real dangers in these artificial markets, as the spectacular failures of Long Term Capital Management and Enron have shown.

While we may take comfort in the broad spreading of risks in the derivatives market or in the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates to bring about a “soft landing”, in the “natural economy”, everything inevitably fluctuates. There are physical cycles of day and night, winter and summer, rain and drought; business (demand) cycles of boom followed by bust; and production cycles of planting & harvest or research & development, cycles that in the latter case can be much longer, e.g. years in automobiles or decades in aerospace. Reserves are essential to manage the uncertainty inherent in these real-world cycles.

Of course, there are still some folks who contend with these natural economy effects on a daily basis. These include farmers, entrepreneurs, and long-suffering managers in the global manufacturing economy. Many of these maintain a deep disdain for the financial types, but what is really needed is for those in charge of managing the money to have one foot firmly planted in each world, i.e. to have an appreciation of the fine points of financial analysis while also maintaining a grasp of natural economy dangers.

As an example, successful entrepreneurs soon learn that Job One is managing cash, not maximizing profits. Without liquidity, a business is bled dry, no matter what the balance sheet or income statement says. Entrepreneurs also soon learn that even when you have a good year, that is no guarantee that the next year will be the same. You learn first to use the receipts from “fat years” to fill holes that were left from the lean years, before presuming to tackle other opportunities.

This is simply prudent management, something understood by millions of small business people, and it really bothers me that a huge business like Exxon Mobil could lose sight of something so basic. Besides this, I can’t help but think of all the companies that have wasted windfalls on imprudent acquisitions. Of course there’s Chrysler, for example, who after emerging from bankruptcy with the help of federal guarantees, plowed many of the profits from the success of its minivans into questionable acquisitions, and ended up back on the brink. Then there was also Mobil’s own purchase of Montgomery Wards, which one employee described to me as a “money disposal project.”

There’s no guarantee that oil prices will be at $70 a year from now, and I hope Exxon Mobil’s employees, directors and shareholders, as well as the PBGC, will put pressure on its executives to do the prudent thing and fully fund its pensions now, while they could just “write a check” to do it. Maybe the company is entitled to its “obscene profits”, as some put it, but it’s not entitled to leave us holding the bag.

John Drzal raised some good points in his comments on my last post. He doesn’t think a guest worker program will do much to reduce inflows, and apparently favors hefty fines to those who employ illegals.

Regarding immigration reform, there are at least a couple of key factors here. First, we have to reset the legal clock, so to speak. It’s pointless to try to take severe action against illegals and their U.S.-born children after decades. A fine would be in order, as some have suggested, though I think it would be unwise to make it too severe. In any case, by starting a full-blown regulated guest worker program as part of an overhauled immigration law, the U.S. effectively resets the clock, and conveys clearly that future violations will not be ignored as in the past.

The second factor is this whole nonsense of severe penalties to employers, etc. First of all, a lot of these employers are individuals, mom and pop restaurants, small contractors, etc. To hit them with huge fines while slapping companies like Wal-Mart on the wrist is just plain wrong.

It’s a general sign that government has failed when it resorts to harsh penalties. A lot of the drug laws fall in this category. Celebrities can smoke joints in the White House, joke on TV about using drugs, etc., usually with impunity. It’s the poor kids without a good lawyer who get locked up.

Certainly, there’s a lot of improvement needed in treatment of farm workers, etc., but government can only really get involved in this once these folks are no longer invisible. I do think regulation and taxation, combined with better future enforcement, can drastically reduce the flows. Nothing will be perfect, but hey, there are a LOT of other folks here illegally besides Hispanics!

Regulation and taxation are among government’s core competencies. The employment laws were already made a lot tighter some years ago, with little to no apparent impact. A hundred laws with severe penalties will do no good if they aren’t enforced. We’ve got a better chance of seeing laws actually enforced if they are more limited, with most of the work being done by regulations instead.

The problem with popular opinion among non-Hispanic Americans is this notion that we need to suddenly act harshly because “All these folks are violating the law!” Rather than being reactionary, we really need to come up with a strategy for dealing with this, or else we’re going to get even more illegal immigration, unless our economy tanks or the dollar declines a lot.

As far as Hispanic communities taking in those who might come in outside of a guest worker program, this will be a problem, no doubt. But when these immigrants have some legal status, they will then have something to lose. I’m certainly not going to argue that it will work perfectly, it won’t. But we need to get these folks on the radar screen, and I think the first step is to create a tiered pathway to citizenship. Then the ones who remain invisible can justly be suspected of being undesirable elements rather than just folks trying to feed their family.

As I noted last time, the program is going to have to be large, but at least these people will be paying taxes. They’re not going to go away in the short run, and trying to get businesses to do the government’s job isn’t going to work, either. The reality is that we all benefit a great deal from immigrant labor, whether in lower food costs (the entire country) or lower costs in many areas such as housing, services, etc. (much of the country). I really don’t think we’re prepared to wreck our economy (which it probably would) just to kick these folks out, and I think in this respect Americans need a bit of a reality check, and immigrants deserve a little credit.

I’ve been putting off writing about immigration because it is such a difficult subject to really nail down. There are so many mixed emotions, conflicting interests, and pertinent historical precedents that it’s hard for even one person to agree with themself. I think Mark Belling’s comment on the Rush Limbaugh show Wednesday, that we can’t get agreement on immigration because we can’t find even two people who totally agree, is right on the money. This is very much an issue in flux, but it may no longer be an issue that can be deferred.

Of course, immigration is only one of many issues that U.S. voters have just wanted to keep sweeping under the rug. This rug is getting awfully lumpy nowadays, and these ugly problems are going to be emerging one-by-one (if we’re fortunate enough not to have to deal with them en masse) in the coming years. Any American can list half a dozen of these, e.g. the trade deficit, national debt, consumer debt, Social Security (i.e. even more national debt), Medicare (ditto), corporate pension plans, a disadvantageous tax and benefits structure for global competition, rapidly rising health care costs, and, oh yeah, a couple of looming possibilities - proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and of various natural diseases such as bird flu.

To George W. Bush’s (and his staff’s) credit, they have been on the immigration issue for some time, but seemingly with little support from anyone, whether fellow Republicans or even Mexican President Vicente Fox. Fox’s anticipated good relationship with Bush seems, instead, to have proved to be largely dysfunctional. Unlike Social Security reform, which Bush was astute to push soon after the election but unfortunately with a scheme largely at odds with the public, on immigration I think he’s probably more in tune than other politicians realize.

Maybe the best way to solve this political, diplomatic and economic dilemma is by a process of elimination, because the reality is that most of the ideas Congress has offered will almost surely fail in practice. Are we really going to lock up church members who help illegal aliens or deport parents while leaving probably millions of “orphans” here in the U.S.? Are we going to deport millions of children who are American citizens? Are we going to destroy our agriculture industry, one area where - I hope - we still enjoy a trade surplus?

These “solutions” are just not going to happen. Are we really going to have another Trail of Tears down to Matamoros or Tijuana? Any politically workable solution is going to have to deal with the historical reality, not just the rhetoric of a bunch of folks who want the cheap housing and living costs of the Sun Belt while pretending the issue just suddenly got out of hand, and deserves some sort of abrupt knee-jerk response.

The hard fact is that when you let a situation go on for decades unchecked, you don’t have some of the options you would have if you dealt with it promptly. Whole generations have grown up in citizenship limbo, and to pretend you can just slice this gordian knot with one sharp legislative blow is nuts. We need to figure out where we want to go, and then figure out how to deal with the situation we’ve already got.

What you can’t stop, you regulate and tax, and this is really the only workable solution. If you raise the costs, you reduce the demand. Maybe someone can come up with a better solution, but it seems to me that in order to regulate the inevitable cross-border flows, a sizable guest-worker program will be needed. Incentives will have to be in place that cause most potential immigrants to be willing to go with the program, and disincentives such as more secure borders and harsher penalties for future violators will be needed to reduce the flows to a workable level. I don’t know what this level is, but it’s going to be more people than a lot of folks will like. Deal with it; in the long run we can probably reduce the pressure on our borders if we can encourage Latin American countries to reform politically (really key) and economically.

The guest worker program will need to be multi-tiered. Workers will have to meet higher requirements to move to the higher levels (allowing longer residency periods and possibly bringing in family members), and of course the highest level will be attaining citizenship, for some portion of the workers. All the workers’ earnings need to be taxed, and tax violations should be grounds for deportation. Health care, education and other issues will have to be worked out, but since they are guest workers, they shouldn’t be on welfare.

While a large guest-worker program may be hard for a lot of Americans to accept, there will also need to be measures taken that will be unpopular with many illegals and with many Hispanic Americans. We must do away with bilingual ballots and require that all citizens learn English as a qualification for citizenship. Bilingual education will remain, I’m sure, at least to teach guest workers’ children in public schools, which will obviously have to be compensated to some degree since guest workers may not own much taxable property. Nevertheless, instruction in Spanish should be only a stopgap, and all students should be required to take English, and have a limit on how many years of bilingual education they can receive before transitioning to regular classes.

Unlike other immigrant ethnic groups, English seems to be a real sticking point for a lot of Hispanics. I really don’t feel any sympathy here. My wife immigrated to this country from Taiwan, and she had to go to kindergarten not knowing any English. Now her vocabulary is probably better than mine. Everyone understands that it’s harder for the older folks to learn the language, but to insist that the next generation can just stay out of the loop of discourse is quite irresponsible. The United States is a republic, a representative democracy, which requires that its citizens be able to communicate with one another. To dispense with this would pose a threat to the whole fabric of our society.

I know that emotions are charged over immigration, with accusations of racism, ingratitude, double standards and the like being wildly thrown about. I hope folks will calm down and actually talk to one another. Hispanics have a lot to be upset about but they certainly should have seen this coming by now. I tend to sympathize with the students getting out and protesting (peacefully), but they need to realize they are sending an incredibly incoherent message, waving Mexican flags while demanding the rights of United States citizens.

Laws have to be enforced, or else they need to be changed. Millions of Hispanics have chosen to violate our laws, and they have no business being upset that we may now choose to change the law and then enforce it. On the other hand, I hope that as we prepare this spring to begin celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony, that Americans pushing for immigration reform will remember that nearly all of us had ancestors who were once immigrants, and reflect on the somber fact that a measure of humility is, indeed, in order.

I was disappointed to read of Wal-Mart’s reversal as it announced it would carry the Plan B “emergency contraception”, aka morning after pill. At least Wal-Mart has confirmed it will continue its conscientious objection program so its pharmacists won’t be required to dispense the drug.

I guess the sun is setting on Sam Walton’s long-held philosophy driving Wal-Mart, that “wherever we’ve been, we’ve always tried to instill in our folks the idea that we at Wal-Mart have our own way of doing things.” [Made in America, p. 66] According to Wal-Mart Vice President of Pharmacy Ron Chomiuk, “We expect more states to require us to sell emergency contraceptives in the months ahead … Because of this, and the fact that this is an FDA-approved product, we feel it is difficult to justify being the country’s only major pharmacy chain not selling it.”

The key word in this latter quote is “only”. Like it or not, being the “only” one is what leaders do, and for a long time Wal-Mart seemed comfortable with this, but their inability in recent years to rise above some of their own problems was already a hint they’ve lost a vision for this. It’s hard to fault companies for abiding by the laws where they operate (Massachusetts and Illinois have required pharmacies to stock Plan B), but it’s annoying when they decide to just knuckle under everywhere else as a foregone conclusion. Plan B is less problematic than RU-486, but is it really so much to hope that at least one company would take a pro-life stand to the fullest extent possible?

Despite this setback, another case points to how there are, nevertheless, many “low-hanging fruit” type opportunities where the pro-life movement could make an impact. It should be easy to find agreement concerning the case of six year old Vietnamese orphan Tuan Van Cao, who needs a visa for emergency surgery in this country. Unfortunately, his condition is urgent, and again bureaucracy has worked its wonders, denying him a visa, even though the costs of his surgery are already covered.

Apparently, his humanitarian parole waiver application was rejected (after two months) by the Parole and Humanitarian Assistance Branch, an office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is itself now a part of that renowned example of your government in action, the Department of Homeland Security. Those trying to help him were told to pursue adoption, a process that could take a year or more.

According to Pam Cope, who reportedly got involved with Vietnamese orphans through the organization Ventures for Children International, “Tuan’s case is black and white. He needs emergency medical treatment and we can give him free medical treatment here in the United States” The pro-life movement needs to do a better job of identifying opportunities like these where children can be protected and there is likely to be little political opposition.

Changes made to immigration law back in 1997 have made Tuan’s predicament fairly common. Reportedly over 5,000 applications for a humanitarian waiver have been rejected in the 2000-2005 period; only about 20% are approved. Obviously, the law needs to be tweaked so that medically urgent cases are assured of receiving expedited approval, unless there is some compelling reason not to.

In the big picture, this visa problem points to how the pro-life movement needs to broaden the scope of its activity. There are many pro-life issues beyond abortion that impact how society treats children and, just as importantly, how society views and values children.

It is encouraging to see that progress may finally be possible in some of the worst areas of the abortion debate, such as partial-birth abortion, acknowledgement of post-abortion syndrome, and RICO abuses. At the same time, by identifying and becoming an advocate in broader areas where some progress may be relatively easily attainable, the pro-life movement could gain credibility and offer a more compelling argument for the value of life, and of the need for us to make the welfare of children and others who are weak a higher priority.

Among these areas of opportunity are more balanced divorce laws that better protect single mothers and children, extensive liberalization of adoption laws and tax credits, and reform of the foster child system. While the underlying philosophy behind the pro-life position is not well understood, it seems, the driving vision of the pro-life position, of compassion and care for even the weakest in society, will be easier to share with more tangible results.

Last week I delighted in the extensive press coverage remembering Rosa Parks and in her becoming the first woman to receive the honor of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Her example showed how anyone can make a difference, and a lot of times it’s the small things that really end up tilting the scales. It’s also worth remembering that there were two teens, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith, who had exhibited the courage to take similar stands in previous months. I guess Rosa Parks was in the right place at the right time, but she still had to have the courage to stand up, or in her case sit down, for what was right.

In the midst of what is a fitting tribute, I hope those of us in the U.S. don’t miss what is going on right now in another democracy, the world’s largest. The Indian Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on the rights of Christian Dalits (”Untouchables”), who have been denied basic rights and opportunities granted to others in India, even Dalits of other religions.

The issue is not a minor one in India, where millions of Dalits have turned to Christianity. The estimate of 18 million Christian Dalits implies a population similar in size to that of Blacks in the U.S. in 1960. The Indian Supreme Court is expected to hold a hearing later this month. I hope the Indian courts and Parliament will give full recognition of all Dalits as valuable members of their society, with appropriate opportunities for affirmative action to help them overcome the effects of the oppressive discrimination they’ve suffered.

At the same time, this would certainly be a fitting time for the mainstream press to incorporate a new element into professional journalism practice. In a way similar to the practice of seeking comments from both sides of a story, it might well prove most helpful and enlightening for journalists to start including coverage of what is happening currently when recounting past struggles and suffering. The sad fact is that there’s almost always a similar struggle going on now somewhere in the world, and I think viewers and readers need to know that, just as the nation needed to know about Rosa Parks in 1955.

It’s amazing that the bankruptcy bill’s provisions regarding hikes in credit card minimum payments aren’t being covered all over the mainstream press. I’m still not clear on whether credit card issuers are definitely required to double minimums on bills after October 17th, or just being pressured to do so (most reports indicate that it’s mandatory).

I’ve long been annoyed by how the press feeds us constantly news we can’t really do anything about, but ignores stuff we could actually use, or at least need to know about (one reason why blogs are growing in popularity). This sparse coverage of credit card changes would seem to be an extreme example of this. In a year where we’ve seen gas prices double, electric and natural gas rates rise rapidly, etc., it seems like a really bad time for any more abrupt changes.

I still remember the effect of the congressional bounced-check scandal back in 1994. Americans are sensitive about their pocketbooks. When they found out their congressmen were writing hot checks as a matter of course, Newt Gingrich put together the Contract With America and threw a bunch of them out. The Republicans have controlled the House ever since.

If this is true, that minimums are doubling this month, then I can’t help but picture in my mind millions of Americans furiously calling their credit card issuers, only to be told that it wasn’t their doing; Congress passed a law requiring it. I doubt that’s likely to go over too well.

Obviously, any big change ought to be phased in gradually (gradualism is one of the basic tenets of conservatism). As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises observed, any governmental intervention in the economy is likely to produce opposite of the desired effect. Rather than “helping” Americans to pay off their credit cards faster, such a change is likely just to increase fees and therefore credit card balances, or else some other form of loans.

I don’t want to be alarmist, but I can’t help but wonder if blogger Dana Blankenthorn is right when he writes, “The next U.S. recession will start in earnest on October 17.” In any case, it will be interesting to see if there’s a quick reaction by Congress over this to fix it.

Certainly any hikes in minimum payments ought to be phased in, rather than doubled abruptly, but even if Congress reacts quickly, the holiday shopping season will likely be ruined. Add to that the housing boom and autos, I suppose.

I hope that if there really is a train wreck over this, that the press has to answer for their negligence, as well as the politicians.