www.JoeCobb.com

Having pandered to a labor union audience in Chicago on August 7, Tuesday night, the Democratic presidential field decamped to Los Angeles for a debate pitched to the interests of gay voters on the LOGO cable network Thursday (Aug.9) and broadcast several times.

The Democratic Party has clearly decided to align itself with traditional gay lobbying groups and the affluent donor base they can deliver. But while the association has clear advantages, signs also suggest that a substantial part of the electorate may be uncomfortable if Democrats become too closely aligned with another politically correct pressure group.

Three new statewide polls by Quinnipiac University in the key swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania found that a significant number of voters were likely to react to a high-profile endorsement of a candidate by gay groups by voting against that candidate.

In Ohio, the mother of all swing states, 10% of voters say an endorsement by gay groups would make them more likely to support a candidate versus 34% who said such an endorsement would make them less likely (54% said such an endorsement wouldn’t matter).  A majority of the voters in each of the states opposes gay marriage, but at the same time more than half favor some type of legal recognition for gay couples.

Troubling for Democrats, independent voters, much sought-after by both parties, essentially tracked with the rest of the population in viewing the endorsement of gay groups negatively.  Among independent voters, the numbers were 12% more likely and 28% less likely. The numbers in Pennsylvania and Florida roughly tracked those in Ohio.

An anti-gay animus explains some of the hostility, but polling analysts say a general antipathy to special interest groups dominating American politics also plays a part.

– John Fund, in Political Diary, August 9, 2007

From LOGO TV studios in Los Angeles: When Biological Determinism Is PC

If former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has been most helped by his performances in the Republican presidential debates, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson continues to convince party insiders he simply isn’t ready for prime time.

Mr. Richardson has delivered indifferent debate performances so far, but at last night’s gay-themed session in Los Angeles he managed to do a belly flop into treacherous political waters. Asked about whether being gay was a matter of biology or choice, Mr. Richardson - who previously has had to apologize for the use of a Spanish-language gay slur - wandered into a politically incorrect answer that left the largely gay audience treating him as if he were, well, a Republican.

“It’s a choice,” he told the audience, then sunk into his armchair as listeners sat in shocked silence.

“I’m not sure you understood the question,” singer Melissa Etheridge promptly upbraided him. But Mr. Richardson stumbled on with neither the confidence of someone who was saying what he really believed or the agility of a candidate who knows how to recover from a faux pas. “I’m not a scientist. I don’t see this as an issue of science or definition,” he said. “I don’t like to answer definitions like that, that perhaps are grounded in science or something else I don’t understand.” The crowd continued its stony silence.

It didn’t take long for Richardson aides to try their own damage control operation. They issued a groveling statement in which Mr. Richardson says he doesn’t believe homosexuality is a matter of choice.

But the damage is done. Mr. Richardson, already on probation for the anti-gay slur, will now be marked as someone “who doesn’t get it” by a key Democratic donor base. Chalk up his chances of getting the Democratic vice presidential nomination as fading fast.

– John Fund, in Political Diary, August 10, 2007

National Survey Shows Gays and Lesbians Outpace U.S.
Average In Voting Participation

A new national survey reveals that gay and lesbian consumers are far more likely to have voted in the last presidential and midterm elections than the population in general.

Significant numbers of both gay men and lesbians also donated to a political party in the past year. The survey also found that despite significant social and political progress over the past decade, majorities of both gays and lesbians believe homosexuality will remain a “divisive” issue in ten years.

The survey results are included in the Gay Consumer Index and Lesbian Consumer Index, precedent-setting national surveys of more than 12,000 gay Americans and 10,000 lesbian Americans conducted in spring 2007 and set to be released later this month by Community Marketing Inc.

“The results of the Gay Consumer Index and Lesbian Consumer Index studies demonstrate that the political parties would be smart to pay attention to the issues that mean the most to gay and lesbian voters,” declared Tom Roth, president of Community Marketing Inc. “We have far more at stake than the average voter and we’re therefore far more engaged in the political process.”

More than 92 percent of gay male respondents (92.5 percent) reported that they voted in the 2004 presidential election with nearly 84 percent (83.8 percent) reporting that they voted in the mid-term election in 2006. Results for lesbians were similar with nearly 91 percent (90.7 percent) of lesbian respondents reporting that they voted in the 2004 presidential election and 78 percent reporting that they voted in the mid-term election in 2006. In comparison, media reports estimate that 64 percent of the general population voted in the 2004 presidential election and just 40 percent of the general population voted in the 2006 mid-term election.

Slightly more than 31 percent of lesbian respondents (31.1 percent) reported that they made a financial contribution to a political party in the past twelve months. Forty percent (40.1 percent) of gay male respondents reported that they made a financial contribution to a political party in the past twelve months.

And finally, large majorities of gay male and lesbian respondents agreed with the statement that “homosexuality will still be a divisive issue in the USA in 10 years.” Slightly more than 73 percent (73.4 percent) of gay male and nearly 73 percent (72.9 percent) of lesbian respondents agreed with that statement. In general, larger numbers of older respondents agreed with this view than younger respondents with more gay male and lesbian Baby Boomers agreeing with the statement than gay males or lesbians born after 1980.

from “Edge,” August 13, 2007

This is a good thing, that foreign governments stand up against protectionist lobby groups in the United States. American congressmen, e.g. Senator Schumer (D-NY), have started to pander strongly to declining industries (e.g. those infected with the tapeworm of unionism). They accuse China of dishonesty with its fixed exchange rate. This claim about an undervalued exchange rate, and the demand it be changed, is a new form of financial protectionism. If China did it, American goods in China would be cheaper and Chinese goods sold in the United States would be more expensive - just like a tariff would do.

The Chinese government has replied, forcefully. It can use the “threat” of dumping dollar asset Treasury bonds, affecting the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar as well as U.S. domestic interest rates, to forestall this stupid congressional advocacy. Such an action by China would possibly hurt them more than it would hurt the American economy, but it would hurt the American economy. It shows the cost of this American protectionism; those like Schumer only only say it would help “us” (see my essay, “What Do You Mean ‘Us,’ Mr. President?).

I say, “Good for Chinese blowback.” It is in the best interests of the American people. It is too bad the American congress is on the wrong side of the issue, thanks to lobbying by that special interest (the tapeworm).

Which is worse?

(i) U.S. feudal labor unionist protectionism, or
(ii) Chinese manipulated market policies?

I think the Chinese represent my interests, producing and selling cheap goods in America, against the craven special-privilege seeking of labor union leaders In America, at the expense of all the rest of us.

China Threatens ‘Nuclear Option’ of Dollar Sales

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.

Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the U.S. currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.

It would also cause a spike in U.S. bond yields, hammering the U.S. housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900 billion in a mix of U.S. bonds.

Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing’s foreign reserves should be used as a “bargaining chip” in talks with the U.S.

“Of course, China doesn’t want any undesirable phenomenon in the global financial order,” he added.

He Fan, an official at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, went even further today, letting it be known that Beijing had the power to set off a dollar collapse if it choose to do so.

“China has accumulated a large sum of U.S. dollars. Such a big sum, of which a considerable portion is in U.S. treasury bonds, contributes a great deal to maintaining the position of the dollar as a reserve currency. Russia, Switzerland, and several other countries have reduced the amount of their dollar holdings.

“China is unlikely to follow suit as long as the yuan’s exchange rate is stable against the dollar. The Chinese central bank will be forced to sell dollars once the yuan appreciated dramatically, which might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar,” he told China Daily.

The threats play into the presidential electoral campaign of Hillary Clinton, who has called for restrictive legislation to prevent America being “held hostage to economic decisions being made in Beijing, Shanghai, or Tokyo.”

She said foreign control over 44 percent of the U.S. national debt had left America acutely vulnerable.

Simon Derrick, a currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon, said the comments were a message to the U.S. Senate as Capitol Hill prepares legislation for the autumn session.

“The words are alarming and unambiguous. This carries a clear political threat and could have very serious consequences at a time when the credit markets are already afraid of contagion from the subprime troubles,” he said.

A bill drafted by a group of U.S. senators, and backed by the Senate Finance Committee, calls for trade tariffs against Chinese goods as retaliation for alleged currency manipulation.

The [RMB] yuan has appreciated 9 percent against the [U.S.] dollar over the last two years under a crawling peg but it has failed to halt the rise of China’s trade surplus, which reached $26.9 billion in June.

Henry Paulson, the U.S. Tresury Secretary, said any such sanctions would undermine American authority and “could trigger a global cycle of protectionist legislation.”

Mr. Paulson is a China expert from his days as head of Goldman Sachs. He has opted for a softer form of diplomacy, but appeared to win few concession from Beijing on a unscheduled trip to China last week aimed at calming the waters.

Last Updated: 1:41am BST August 9, 2007

from CLS

Sometimes people say that after someone was born that the mold was broken. And broken molds are what come to mind as I try to grapple with the issues surrounding the killing of Pat Tillman. In Tillman’s case he was the one who broke the mold. Everything I learn about him defies conventional stereotypes.

First, here was a man who was a football star. The stereotype for that is a dumb jock. But Tillman was nobody’s fool. He read widely and was interested in the world of ideas. He had an academic grade point average of just under 4.0 - almost perfect. He also challenged others about negative attitudes toward gay people. Again, not the typical sports player.

Tillman played football and played it well. His last season of professional football earned him over $500,000. But the religious fanatics on 9/11 changed the course Tillman would take. Appalled at what he saw that day he decided to enlist in the US military. His country was under attack.

He finished the season as he was obligated to do. He was offered a new contract worth $3.6 million. He told his agent “Don’t worry about me. I’m thinking about doing something else.� He had a higher loyalty. The team understood this since he had shown them the same loyalty. Previously the St. Louis Rams approached Tillman to play for them and had offered him $9 million. He refused the offer to stay with the Phoenix Cardinals instead. But after the attacks he felt his loyalty to country had to come first.

Together, with his brother Kevin, who had turned down a chance to play professional baseball, Pat enlisted. The sport’s network ESPN wanted to give the Arthur Ashe Courage Award to the brothers. Neither of them chose to attend to accept it. Younger brother Richard appeared to tell the audience: “Pat and Kevin don’t think they are better than anyone else.�

Even in death Tillman defied conventional thinking. For decades the believers have comforted themselves with the claim that there are no atheists in foxholes. Tillman died, as he lived, an unbeliever.

A military chaplain spread the story of the last moments of Tillman’s life but he exaggerated the facts to make the atheist look cruel and mean. The chaplain, who was not there, claimed that Tillman insulted a fellow soldier for being religious. According to the chaplain’s story Tillman told a praying soldier to “shut your fucking mouth� and told the man he was “sniveling�. The soldier involved said this is untrue. He says he was praying and Tillman said: “Hey, O’Neal, why are you praying? God can’t help us now.�

The soldier, Bryan O’Neil, says that “more or less put my mind straight about what was going on.� That is nothing like the smear spread by the chaplain. Apparently Tillman’s non theistic beliefs bother the military, as we shall see shortly.

In this attack Tillman was killed. The US military told the world that he died under attack from evil terrorists. It was lie. Worse yet, the military knew it. Tillman was killed by someone in the US military.

But Tillman was the poster boy for the Pentagon. He was the sports player who turned down millions to join the army. He was photogenic, smart and successful. And the military hoped that they could dupe lots of young kids into thinking the same sort of glamour will apply to them if they enlist. And now he was dead. And worse yet he was killed by the US military not by any enemy combatant.

So they invented an attack that didn’t take place. Their goal was to turn the Tillman funeral into a military recruiting bonanza. And these men, including people at the highest levels of the military, lied to the Tillman family about what happened.

But Tillman’s family weren’t buying what the government was selling. And they noticed discrepancies in the official myth invented by the brass. So they asked questions and got more lies in return. The web of deceit woven by the spinmeisters of the government started to unravel bit by bit. So the government went on the offensive. One military investigator started attacking the family.

This vile investigator, Lt. Col Ralph Kauzlarich, didn’t want to do his job and investigate the facts. He wanted to sweep them under the rug. He bitched that investigators would have dropped the case long ago except Tillman was a celebrity and his parents refused to let the matter go. He says the whole incident was “an unfortunate accident� but that the family won’t drop the case “because of their religious beliefs.�

What he means is that non-religious beliefs. Kauzlarich was on the warpath because the Tillman’s weren’t Christians. He discovered that when Tillman’s body was being brought back to the US that Tillman’s brother, and fellow soldier, objected when a chaplain was brought in to pray. That bothered Kauzlarich. And he was now convinced that the Tillman’s were trouble makers merely because they were not Christians. He told ESPN:

When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.

He said the Tillman’s lack faith including “trust in the system� so he didn’t “think anything will make them happy . . . because they can’t bring their son back.�

Pat’s mother, Mary, was offended. “Oh, it has nothing to do with the facts that this whole thing is shady. But it is because we are not Christians.� She said, “Pat may not have been what you call a Christian. He was about the best person I ever knew. I mean, he was just a good guy. He didn’t lie. He was very honest. He was very generous. He was very humble. I mean, he had an ego, but it was a healthy ego. It is like, everything those (people) are, he wasn’t.�

Kauzlarich basically admitted that he doesn’t want to know who killed Pat Tillman. He said they probably could have discovered who had but he said: “I don’t think it really matters.� He told reporters: “I had no issue on not finding a specific person responsible for doing it.�

Precisely what happened is unclear. There was bad planning, poorly trained soldiers, and mismanagement. There may have been more but we may never know. Certainly Tillman had concluded that the US government had lied about the war. He had become an opponent of the Iraqi invasion.

Here was a man with the integrity to question professional football coaches about whether they harbored any antigay sentiments. He was not afraid to speak out. Did he? Did someone, perhaps offended by his opposition to the war, his atheism, or his social tolerance, decide that the incident was a perfect time to settle a score? Perhaps? But that is only conjecture. We don’t know because men like Kauzlarich decided it was best not to know.

Immediately after the killing the cover up began. We discovered that someone destroyed Tillman’s personal journal. Why would they do that? Was there something in the journal that they didn’t want out? This would have been a cherished memento for the Tillman family. Instead it was destroyed. His uniform was destroyed as well. Investigations were not done and the military invented a false story to promote the glory of their war.

Three days after the killing the soldiers who were there had a meeting. Immediately everyone was looking for excuses not causes. They talked about panic. And many of them immediately tried to blame Tillman for his own death. This only stopped when Bryan O’Neal spoke up. A witness that evening says O’Neal was barely holding back tears and was emotional shook up. He told the others, “The only reason I am standing here is because Pat Tillman saved my life.�

So far we don’t know exactly what happened. All we know is what didn’t happen and that’s the original, official story released by the US government. The cover up has been shameless and blatant.

Mary Tillman told the media that both the Left and the Right have tried to use Pat Tillman’s death for their own purposes. She dismisses both sides saying Pat’s thoughts were far more complex than either of those movements can understand. She said one couldn’t put his views in a box. Tillman appeared to be a paradox in so many ways. But the more I learn the more I have to admire him. The complexities of life don’t fit the Left-Right mold. Since Pat Tillman didn’t seem to fit anyone’s mould I think we should realize Mary Tillman is correct when she say’s Pat wasn’t someone who couldn’t be so easily stereotyped. And I admire that.

Posted by Centre for Liberal Studies, August 01, 2007,
http://snipurl.com/tillman

When you take benefits from the government, do you also give up some of your rights? The 9th Circuit federal appeals court has ruled you do. As candidates and congressmen offer “free� health care, “free� public education, and “free� assistance to the needy, the truth that nothing is free needs to be told.

In San Diego, an aggressive program of welfare fraud investigation conducted by the district attorney’s office involves unannounced, surprise home searches. Deputy district attorney Luis Aragon told The New York Times, “Doesn’t the government have the right to some level of verification? . . . Either you say yes to everybody or you have some verification.�

If the government is going to provide “free� benefits to someone, some criteria are needed for this entitlement. San Diego wants to enforce the rules. But the investigators have found not only evidence of welfare fraud, they have picked up evidence that is turned over to the police for drug crime enforcement. They have removed children from some homes when they suspected mistreatment or child abuse.

The federal appeals court found nothing in the San Diego enforcement program that violates personal rights because “people are free to opt out by giving up their welfare benefits.â€? The San Diego program of surprise home inspections is a logical extension of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Wyman v. James, cited by the appeals court, that home visits scheduled by social workers are constitutional on the basis of “rehabilitation” for welfare recipients. Surprise home visits are now also okay in the 9th Circuit.

“Free� public education provides another example. Recently the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Morse v. Frederick, that a high school student outside of school on a public street did not have the free speech to advocate legalization of marijuana and that his principal had the right to expel him from school. The court was careful to say this decision was not about free speech in general but only about punishing the specific speech Chief Justice Roberts and the school principal disapprove of (changing the marijuana law).

The rights of a citizen to protection from government power are nullified if the government can buy them back by paying “free� benefits. These constitutional rights include the Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure, the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and the right to vote. Yet you give up the right to privacy if you draw welfare, you give up your right against self-incrimination when you file an income tax return, and in California some cities make you give up the right to vote against property tax increases when you apply for a building permit.

But this is how “welfare rights� work. A welfare right is a specific license for someone to get a “free� benefit, but someone else has to provide that benefit. In rural areas of Canada, where medical care is a “right,� doctors are assigned like soldiers for tours of duty.

We now understand from the recent federal court cases that the beneficiaries of “free� benefits don’t have the right to refuse the government’s terms of service either. When all health benefits are “free,� will fatties and smokers be denied treatment for heart attacks and strokes because they have opted out of a healthy lifestyle? Will “rehabilitation� be enforced to control diet and smoking? Will elderly people be told that an extra year of life is not worth its cost to the taxpayers?

Even Social Security pensions, surely one of the most benign government benefits, are the basis for national identification numbers and the growing problem of identity theft. When the immigration laws are amended, your privilege to keep a legal job will depend on having a number in the government’s computer system.

In the San Diego welfare rights case, one of the dissenting judges, Harry Pregerson, wrote: “The government does not search through the closets and medicine cabinets of farmers receiving subsidies. They do not dig through the laundry baskets and garbage pails of real estate developers or radio broadcasters.” Only the poor, he said, must “give up their rights of privacy in exchange for essential public assistance.â€?

The judge in his compassion has never heard about the 1930s case where the farmer was jailed for growing his own corn to feed his own cattle because it violated a federal farm acreage control program. Real estate developers and radio broadcasters may be next.

This short video [click here] is an interview of Joe Cobb in 2005 by producer Mark Selzer and Angela Keaton, executive director of the Libertarian Party of California. We discuss the economic consequences of war on an economic system in general, and specific examples of the harm caused to the American economy by the war in Iraq.

by Ward Boston, Jr.

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry, it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel’s June 8, 1967, bombing of the Navy intelligence ship Liberty.

On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel’s combined air and naval forces attacked the Liberty for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty-four American sailors died, and 172 were injured. The Liberty remained afloat only by the crew’s heroic efforts.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Adm. Isaac C. Kidd – president of the Court of Inquiry – that President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of “mistaken identity.�

The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for 40 years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel’s actions – even when they kill Americans?

Today [June 8], survivors of Israel’s cruel attack will gather in Washington, D.C., to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man, and when orders come in from the secretary of defense and president of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.

Adm. Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy’s official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel’s apologists to claim this attack was a case of “mistaken identity.â€?

Adm. Kidd told me that after receiving the president’s cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Department of Defense and rewrite portions of the court’s findings. He said, “Ward, they’re not interested in the facts. It’s a political matter, and we cannot talk about it.â€? We were to “put a lid on itâ€? and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand-correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel – even when it kills Americans – in the halls of Congress?

Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink “the American ship.�

Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely 40 years is long enough to wait.

June 8, 2007

Ward Boston served as chief counsel to the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack on the U.S. Navy intelligence ship Liberty. He also served as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy’s Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the the College of William and Mary School of Law and a resident of Coronado.

Congress is beginning work again on immigration law. Amid all the fanfare, the underlying problem with U.S. immigration policy will not be changed. Our current system promotes the migration of family members, particularly elderly relatives, and those new people rapidly qualify for financial aid from taxpayers. Meanwhile, young workers who would pay taxes are denied visas.

Much of the heated debate on this subject is rhetorical spin. Frank Luntz, the Republican strategist credited with the 1994 congressional victory of Newt Gingrich, writes this advice for conservatives in his book, Words That Work (2007): “Never say ‘undocumented workers.’ Instead say ‘illegal immigrants.’ This linguistic distinction may prove to be the political battle of the decade. The label used to describe those that enter America illegally determines the attitudes people have toward them.”

Describing the issue with that word, “illegal,” brings support to opponents of immigration they would not otherwise earn. To escape the mind-clouding effect of this rhetoric, look at the original law these immigrants have violated. Surely this is a victimless crime.

In 1924, inspired by the eugenics movement “to save the superior Nordic race” and under growing racial hatred fostered by the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist groups, the U.S. Congress adopted for the first time a national quota system for immigration. That quota system favored northern Europeans, and eastern/southern Europeans, Latinos (Catholics and Jews) as well as Asians and Africans were virtually locked out for 45 years. This quota system still exists today. This is what makes it “illegal” for many young workers to accept jobs from eager employers who want to hire them.

The quota system transforms the question about “who is valuable” and “who should come to America” into a collective, national issue. It is actually an issue that ought to be decided at the local, individual level by families and by employers.

In 1965, the quota system was modified to reduce its racist taint. The top priority became bringing parents, siblings, and children from the old country to live in the United States. This was expanded in 1980, 1986, and 1990. But the overall national quota system was not changed.

The result has been to tilt the age demographic of those receiving legal visas, and those on the waiting list for years to come, toward more and more elderly immigrants. More than two-thirds of all visas today are given to family members.

The bottom line is, why should the rest of us care? Why not eliminate the national quota system? Families want to bring their close relatives to America for a better life. Employers want young, willing workers. Perhaps the only reason we should care is that the rest of us are the ones who pay for generous, compassionate welfare programs: poverty medical care and aid to the elderly.

The quota system favors older people. America’s welfare system mostly gives money to older people. Immigration law contains a provision against new immigrants immediately going on welfare, but it is still a systemic problem. After a waiting period of only a few years, large numbers of these elderly family members qualify for public aid, Supplemental Security Income, free medical care, and other forms of assistance.

It is clear America’s immigration quota system is badly broken. The national quota system favors nonworkers. America needs and wants more young workers for its growing economy, but instead we are encouraging immigration by elderly people who will soon be living on the generosity of a compassionate government – and the taxpayers. Those who are “illegally” working are actually contributing taxes to support everyone else’s elderly relatives.

With the quota system filled up with old people, young workers from Mexico have no choice except to run across the Sonoran Desert. Who can blame them?

Moreover, most illegal immigrants do not even come across the Mexican border. It is easy to get a tourist or student visa to come into the United States. Most illegal immigrants simply do not return home when their visas expire. There is no system for tracking people with expired visas.

The national quota system not only shifts the proper focus on “who is valuable, who should come,” from individual Americans – employers and families – it also threatens the civil liberties of every other American.

There now is a federal requirement for employers to check whether job applicants are legal residents, but it is hard to enforce.

In Arizona, it is already mandated employers must verify with computerized data banks, maintained in Washington, to prevent anyone from getting a job if his or her papers are not in order.

Watch out for computer errors in the future that will frustrate many legal Americans from starting a new job.

Big brother will be watching.

by Robert Matthews
From The First Post on-line

Dodgy claims, overblown headlines, basic errors of fact: can you trust anything in the papers these days? Not the tabloids, that is, but the research papers in top science journals.

This is a question raised by fresh doubts about research into one of the scariest scenarios in the global warming debate: the disappearance of the Gulf Stream. This warm current is routinely portrayed as all that stands between Europe and an arctic climate. Not surprisingly, any evidence that the current is weakening is seized on by those demanding action on climate change.

In December 2005, the leading UK science journal Nature made world headlines by publishing evidence of precisely this. Researchers at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) claimed that measurements of the current spanning the last half-century pointed to a 30 per cent slow-down in its strength. The team was in no doubt about the potential seriousness of their claim, warning that any such slow-down would have “profound implications” for the climate of Europe.

So worrying a finding in so prestigious a journal predictably sparked scary headlines in the world’s media. “Scientists probing a dying current bring worst climate fears to the surface,” declared The Australian; “Is Britain on the brink of a new Ice Age?” asked the Daily Mail.

Many scientists already knew the answer to that one: No, we aren’t. They immediately viewed the study’s conclusion with suspicion, not least because it flew in the face of so much previous research. Some quickly spotted the most likely explanation: the NOC’s data simply didn’t justify its conclusion. All measurements have some inherent uncertainty, and in the case of the ocean current data, that uncertainty was huge - casting severe doubt on the reality of any change. Worse still, the NOC team had made a basic mistake in their sums, making their data seem more precise than they were.

Amazed that this has been missed by Nature’s supposedly rigorous referees, one climate expert, Prof. Petr Chylek of the Los Alamos National Laboratories, wrote a formal letter to the journal pointing out the error; it was never published. Now Prof. Chylek has gone public with his concern that Nature is more interested in getting media coverage than publishing reliable science.

In the current issue of Physics Today, he points out the basic errors in the NOC paper, and then reveals a telling detail. In its original form, the title of the paper had included a question-mark, highlighting the uncertainty of the conclusion. By the time it was printed, the question mark had vanished.

The NOC team has confirmed that Nature’s editors suggested cutting the question mark, but insist they were happy to do so.

Both may now be rueing their foray into tabloidesque certainty. New research - gleefully reported recently in Science, Nature’s US-based deadly rival - strongly suggests the Atlantic current hasn’t changed at all.

In a [British] Channel 4 documentary to be screened tonight [3/10/2007], scientists sceptical of man-made climate change warn of the economic risks of precipitate action over global warming. Hardly less worrying is a potential collapse of confidence in the scientific community, if its leading journals turn out to have preferred spurious certainty over judicious doubt.

FIRST POSTED MARCH 9, 2007

by Kim Hawk

TIMELINE
• November 2004: Jack Tanner, first registered libertarian elected in Lee County, Florida, with 129,000 votes.
• January 2005 to June 2006: Jack is unable to reduce wasteful spending.
• July 2006: Tom Clark runs for Seat 3 against incumbent Mark Smith. Kim Hawk runs unopposed for Seat 5.
• November 2006: Tom Clark wins. First libertarian majority on an elected board in Lee County, Florida.
• January 2007: Jack Tanner emails agenda to interested agencies.
• Jan. 11: New board votes 3-2 to eliminate wasteful spending.

Six-thirty a.m. Thursday morning was clear and cold. I felt nervous and excited about my first meeting as an elected Lee County politician. The first indication of something special was the sign at the entrance to the old Twistee Treat building on Hancock near 41 indicating our meeting had been moved to a larger room.

Jack had emailed the agenda and invited media. Everyone knew what was likely to happen. Bureaucrats began to file into the room. Federal, state, county and city managers of agriculture, utilities, water and parks departments took their seats. Jack had never seen anything like it. Two years ago he couldn’t get board members to attend. The air was electric. I could feel the tension in the room. Our two employees Nik and Garry were there. Mark, the board member unseated by Tom, was there with a scowl on his face. No media were present. Cookies and doughnuts sat largely untouched in the center of the table. My stomach was in a knot. I didn’t know if I could do what I came to do.

Chairman Jack Tanner quickly moved through the agenda until he opened the floor to discuss the termination of the mobile irrigation laboratory and our two employees. The next 45 minutes or so were consumed by a series of earnest and emotional pleas by the government managers. Phrases like “millions of gallons wasted” and “billions of gallons saved” were used. Papers were pushed around with columns, charts and graphs. A case was cited in which an elderly, feeble, poor woman, unable to manage her lawn sprinklers, was “saved” by our wonderful program.

Familiar threat

The process was disturbingly familiar as I have witnessed this play acted out in many state, county and city boardrooms over the years. Politicians eager to be re-elected are unable or unwilling to stand up to intimidation and embarrassment that comes with a difficult or unpopular decision.

The Cape Coral utilities manager was impressive and forceful. At one point he said, “Citizens don’t protect themselves so we have to.” He concluded, “You may as well keep this program because if you don’t we will find a way to continue, and the taxpayers won’t save a dime.”

I have heard this threat before. For years myself and a small and determined alliance have successfully fought off a county sales tax. Lee County officials repeatedly scolded us saying, “If you kill this tax we’ll just find another way to raise taxes.” Ever since I was a child, threats and intimidation have provided me with the energy and determination to do the opposite and face the consequences.

I waited until everyone had their say. I started by telling a familiar but fictional story. I said, “Imagine county police coming to my home and taking my wife to jail in handcuffs because I failed to pay a fine for making unnecessary trips in my car and wasting gasoline. Imagine her living with a criminal record caused by a law she didn’t know existed.” I went on, “We don’t make criminals out of people who waste gasoline because we have a relatively free market in gasoline. We do make criminals out of people who waste water because we don’t have a free market in water distribution.”

I turned my attention to both our employees and said, “I feel sad that I am about to vote to end your jobs but I am going to do what I believe is right, not what I think is nice.”

I now know how uncomfortable and awkward it feels to look government workers in the eye and tell them “You’re fired.” I felt sad for the two men whose income was lost and at the same time I felt exhilarated thinking of the thousands of taxpayers who will keep more of their own money.

Nirvana

I looked around the room. Some looked bewildered. Some looked shocked. Our employees, Nik and Garry, were visibly angry. Garry was muttering something I’m glad I couldn’t hear. Jack called for a vote. Ron Edenfield brusquely pushed back his chair and stood, announcing, “Let the record show I don’t have time for this. … ” Ron walked out. Jack was unfazed. Paul Dinger voted to keep the service saying, “I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.” Jack, Tom and I voted to end the program.

The government managers were mumbling to each other. I heard phrases like “this is unbelievable!” They stayed behind to discuss their next move.

I felt many conflicting emotions on my way out. As the day wore on I gradually realized that this was a dream come true. I am 49 years old. For 35 years I have complained about our intrusive and expensive government. Now I am government, and I am doing something about it. I have found my nirvana. Jack, Tom and I will do whatever we can to prevent other agencies from thwarting our attempts to reduce government waste and regulation. We owe this to the taxpayers and ourselves.

I believe this event should be celebrated as the historic and encouraging story that it is, not as a promotion of the Libertarian Party but as a fundamental shift of political thought. Libertarianism is a philosophy and a way of being, not just a party name. Ninety-seven years of unchecked government growth have given us a $9 trillion debt, a failing government school system, an endless war on drugs, bankrupt pension schemes and unaffordable health and home insurance. All of this is financed by taxes that have increased from 10 percent of the average worker’s income in 1914 to 50 percent in 2007. Radical change is long overdue. Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem.” He implied what I believe. We are the solution.

— Kim Hawk is a member of the Lee County, Florida, Soil & Water Conservation District Board.

Copyright January 25, 2007, News-Press.

by Brian Doherty

Libertarianism may seem hopelessly marginalized in American politics. The national record of the Libertarian Party since 1972 — the first year it fielded candidates — isn’t too bright. Ed Clark, the party’s presidential candidate in 1980, received 921,000 votes, the highest ever, but Michael Badnarik, the 2004 nominee, garnered merely 397,000.

Americans continue to be suspicious of radical third-party alternatives — if they are lucky enough to be aware of them — thanks largely to media that foster a feedback loop of “they can’t win, so why cover them?” However, including about 600 candidates on every level — local, state and federal — the Libertarian Party attracted more than 13 million votes in 2006.

But counting votes for third parties isn’t the best way to judge the growth and prospects of libertarianism in the United States. Libertarian ideas should never be counted out in this country because they are at the heart of its founding.

The central insight of libertarianism is in the Declaration of Independence. We have the right to life, liberty and the ability to pursue happiness (though no guarantee of achieving it). Government’s only purpose is to help protect those rights — and if it fails, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

But from the declaration on, in some libertarians’ telling, it has been downhill for liberty in this country. Certainly libertarian sensibilities were offended by the expansion of government’s ability to tax, manage and regulate the economy and our private lives in the 20th century, and by the projection of U.S. military might overseas for reasons other than direct defense of the American people.

In the immediate aftermath of the New Deal, the modern American libertarian movement first began to coalesce in the works of such feisty American female novelists and philosophers as Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane and Ayn Rand, and in the insights of Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek.

But the libertarian movement began as a reaction to how alien the ideas of unbridled individual and market liberty had become. When former Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce chief Leonard Read launched the first libertarian think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education, in 1946, his ideas about limited government and free markets were so marginal in the United States as to seem almost seditious.

Lane was investigated by the FBI in the early postwar years for daring to write on a postcard that Social Security was the sort of socialistic government management of people’s lives we fought wars against. True Social Security, she insisted, was canned vegetables and slaughtered pigs in your cellar. She and Paterson refused to accept anything from the Social Security system.

In 1950, the Buchanan Committee, a House panel investigating lobbying efforts, found Read and his foundation positively un-American because they opposed price controls, public housing, the draft and loyalty oaths. The committee subpoenaed records, called Read to testify and ordered some of his supporters to report on which organizations they backed. One foundation funder, Southern California Edison Vice President William Mullendore, denied Congress’ right to make such a “harassing and burdensome inquiry” into his attempts to influence his government. Mullendore got away with his defiance — but today’s campaign finance laws allow such governmental intrusion.

When, in 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater used libertarian ideas to decry the excessive growth of government, he was defeated by what was at the time the largest margin of votes in U.S. history. He also was condemned as “psychologically unfit” by more than 1,000 psychiatrists (who never met him) for his belief that the managerial-welfare state in the United States had strayed too far from the country’s roots.

Libertarian ideas had a tumultuous period of expansion in the years after Goldwater. Rand became a campus favorite, selling novels of uncompromising libertarianism to tens of millions. A Harvard philosophy professor, Robert Nozick, won a National Book Award for his 1974 book, “Anarchy, State and Utopia,” which rigorously maintained that if we have rights, then most of the functions of the modern state, including redistributing wealth and outlawing certain drugs, are philosophically illegitimate.

Also in 1974, Hayek won the Nobel Prize for economics. Hayek is best known for his 1944 book, “The Road to Serfdom,” which demonstrated to those who believed in a benign socialism that government economic control tends inexorably toward political tyranny. Two years later, Milton Friedman, a man as well known for his libertarian polemics as for his economic contributions, also won the Nobel Prize for economics. Libertarian ideas were moving toward the mainstream.

And then Ronald Reagan, who declared that “the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism,” won the presidency. Libertarians never believed that Reagan fully lived up to his small-government promise. But his libertarian ideas were a key part of the GOP’s electoral appeal.

Over the decades, both major parties have successfully run on libertarian fumes: see Reagan’s talk of tax cutting and entitlement reform; control over inflation since the 1980s, largely thanks to Friedman’s monetarist ideas (Friedman also persuaded President Nixon to end the draft in 1973), and President Clinton’s overhaul of the federal welfare system, which echoed the beliefs and data in libertarian Charles Murray’s 1984 book, “Losing Ground.” One of the biggest policy debates of the Bush presidency has been about privatizing Social Security, an idea in the works at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, since the 1980s. Introducing market incentives and competition into government services — ideas that originated at the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles — are increasingly popular with local and state governments looking to cut costs and improve services.

A full libertarian victory is certainly unlikely, as a cursory survey of the leading presidential candidates going into 2008 shows. But libertarians can take heart in Americans’ growing dissatisfaction with military intervention overseas, with the prospect of an entitlement state in which recipients far outnumber taxpayers and with government manipulations and intrusions in education, immigration, abortion and stem cell research. In such a political context, libertarian wisdom about keeping government out of our lives as much as possible looks more and more promising.

March 25, 2007

Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and the author of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.