www.JoeCobb.com

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.

I turned 62 in February 2006 and took early Social Security in June. Here are a few observations about doing this, and whether to wait until age 63 or 64. I definitely endorse taking it earlier than your “normal retirement age,” but you have to consider all the tax aspects of the Form 1040, Line 20 tax. [See my comment below; I just reversed the early decision and repaid the benefits I received for the first part of this year.]

Based on my experience, I definitely recommend having your early retirement benefits begin punctually on January 1, not in mid-year. [This suggestion is true regardless of the age you begin.] Go to your local SSA office about two months before you want your benefits to begin. I started mine in mid-year and it made my “earnings test” rules more complex. I am now doing things like figuring out how to postpone income about three more weeks, until next year. (We all hate the income tax!)

I recommend you should drain out - distribute - all of the funds from your traditional IRAs and 401(k) plans before beginning SS benefits. Your after-career life should begin as a vacation. Take a vacation and think about what you want to do as an “after career.” If you wait to start distributing IRA and 401(k) funds, you will end up paying a higher tax rate on your distributions.

You can finance your first few years after age 62 by drawing down tax-sheltered savings. Allow Social Security to phase out its discount penalty. When you take early retirement from Social Security, they impose a reduced pension for the rest of your life. The longer you wait, this penalty goes away. Even after your “normal retirement age,” your monthly pension will continue to increase based on the price index formula.

Your financial planning should emphasize distributing retirement savings from traditional IRAs and 401(k) plans before starting Social Security, because these are taxable. After you start to draw Social Security benefits, the marginal tax rate on these distributions will be higher.

I didn’t drain my traditional IRA, but I wish I had done. [I am now going to take IRA distributions instead of SS for a year or so.] But I am thoroughly enjoying doing absolutely nothing by way of earning money, except for my H&R Block hobby-job, which I love. Free advice and sharp tax analysis. I am also highly opinionated.

Come make an appointment to talk with me about your personal income tax situation, from a fully confidential libertarian point of view. Phone 623-872-9112.

My office is on 107th Avenue, northwest side of Indian School Road, in Phoenix, 85037.

In this season of holiday joy and gifts, the image of Santa Claus is everywhere. The jolly old elf and his reindeer-drawn sleigh, his oversized bag of toys, and his “ho ho ho� are passed on by parents to children as part of our cultural tradition.

Since the 1930s, the U.S. government has gotten into the Santa Claus game by increasing the generosity of welfare and subsidy programs. The Congress in recent years has increased government spending to $2,654 billion, doubling the size of government during the Clinton and Bush administrations. Politicians run for re-election on the record of how much of other people’s tax money they have captured for spending back home, just like 535 little Santa Claus elves cheerily making gifts to the happy voters. The Santa Claus spirit is shown by infamous spending earmarks such as the “bridge to nowhere� in Alaska and thousands of other special pork projects, and expensive new entitlements like the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

In the Santa Claus story, however, the toys and gifts he brings are made by magic, so they are free. In the real world, parents have to crowd into stores during the busy retail season and pay real money for those things. Yet, magical thinking still dominates our nation’s political philosophy, at least in regard to government spending.

But the Santa Claus story should be taken seriously as an example of political reality in the United States today for other reasons, too. There are increasing examples of how our government is more closely resembling the mythical figure, and not in a good way. Santa Claus is becoming “Santa Claws.�

Remember the lyrics of the famous song,

He knows when you are sleeping;
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

In the past six years, if not for as long as memory will serve, this is now the story of our government. The idea that Americans have some constitutional rights to private property and personal freedom are becoming mere historical footnotes. “Santa Claws� has come to town, and he is gathering information about every aspect of our lives. “He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.�

The new Military Commissions law, passed earlier this year, has given the president the power to order the indefinite detention of any person, anywhere in the world—including U.S. citizens in the United States—without the right to a trial and without the historic right of habeas corpus. The president, or his officers, need only certify that one is an “enemy combatant,� which is a term not defined in the law.

Of course, this power will never be used by our president for bad purposes; no, of course not. Only terrorists will be imprisoned and tortured, but environmental activists should be careful, too. Right-to-life activists who protest outside abortion clinics need to watch their step. If the military draft is established again, as Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) wants, be careful not to protest or resist the draft, as millions of Americans did in the 1970s.

The USA PATRIOT Act adopted a few years ago provides for warrantless searches of our homes and businesses, along with spying on our library records, our Internet activity, and our bank accounts. The Real ID act provides for a nationwide system of photo identification, and Congress is seriously looking at a national data bank of DNA and other biological identification measures. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that Larry Hilbel did not have the right to refuse to show identification to a police officer, even though he was not suspected of any crime.

A national computerized data bank is being set up to identify everyone who can be legally authorized to work in this country, as part of the new focus on illegal immigration. Medical records are being computerized and centralized, for greater efficiency in emergency treatment of accidents and illness. Pets are being implanted with radio frequency identification chips, and some serious proposals have been made to use these devices on children, who are at risk of abduction and abuse.

How did we manage to transform this “land of the free� into a modern totalitarian state? Perhaps we just invited Santa Claws to come to town and he “knows when we’ve been bad,� or at least when we are thinking about the freedom we have lost.

Orange County (CA) Register, November 29:

Superior Court Judge William Nevitt in San Diego has issued a preliminary ruling denying a lawsuit by San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties seeking to overturn Proposition 215, California’s medical marijuana law approved by voters in 1996. The counties had sought to have the law voided because it conflicts with federal law, which does not recognize medical uses for marijuana and prohibits any use or possession of marijuana.

Judge Nevitt ruled that since Prop. 215 does not require residents or officials to do something specifically banned by federal law, it shouldn’t be overturned.

This attempt to overturn a state law approved by voters because of conflict with federal law turns our constitutional system on its head. The founders wrote a Constitution that gave all powers and freedoms not granted exclusively to the central government to the states and to the people. The idea was to make the states “laboratories of democracy” in which different approaches to issues could be tried, tested and refined.

In fact, although it’s doubtful most current courts would agree, there’s a stronger case that the federal drug laws themselves are unconstitutional than that California and 10 other states are forbidden to temper the drug war with sensible compassion toward seriously ill people.

We hope Judge Nevitt sticks to his guns in his final ruling, due in 90 days or so.

Milton Friedman has joined the pantheon of eternal lights to our movement. I knew him at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. He and Rose used to invite us to their home on Dorchester Avenue for evenings of conversation; he was funny, and kind, and more inspiring than I can describe. His book, Capitalism and Freedom, was published the year I entered college at Chicago. His influential Newsweek column started a few years later, and he went on to become more and more involved in popular writing.

He was one of the few most-influential figures in the 20th Century who never held a high government office. Yes, during World War II, he worked as a staff economist at the U.S. Treasury, but it is NOT true that he came up with the idea of the payroll withholding tax (see his autobiography, Two Lucky People [1998], pp. 118-23).

Milton and Rose were a perfect couple; both very, very intellectual and very much in love all their lives. She does not get enough credit from the outside world, but Milton never failed to let you know how she worked with him. If you feel sad about his death, please feel how tragic it is for her now. Their autobiography is a fascinating and very human story of the reassertion of classical liberal ideas from the lowest points in early century to triumph at the conclusion.

I think it is indicative of his passion that the money he received from the Nobel prize was turned into the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, which is dedicated to bringing competition and choice into lower education. He is the earliest person, I think, who analyzed the public school model as two issues: how is education financed vs. how education is provided, and identified the second as a government-monopoly problem. If his ideas come to save the world, as I believe they will, it is surely his work to transform basic education that will have the deepest impact.

Friedman will be remembered for his work that overturned the Keynesian model of government-centered manipulation of the economy, but it might be worth knowing it was not his own economic ideas that did it. His own economic ideas were classical macroeconomic theory, and he openly credited his teachers, Frank Knight, Henry Simons, and Jacob Viner at Chicago, and the classical liberals of the 18-19th centuries. Milton Friedman’s triumph happened because he was a brilliant statistician and knew how to use the GDP data the government had been collecting since the mid-1930s. By the mid-1950s, there was enough data actually to prove the government had caused the Great Depression and it always produces most of the instability in the economy.

Knowing this was true, as Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek did, was not enough. Friedman actually proved it to the point where a skeptical (and politically hostile) world had to agree. He always used his splendid technical, mathematical talent to demolish again and again the prejudices of economists who believed the free market was somehow defective.

No, against the slur of opponents, he did not believe “the market solves all problems,” but he did understand how governments distort and destroy markets, causing problems, and how markets require property rights and information, and transaction methods, that government is responsible for.

It was not Friedman who was the main influence in Chile under Pinochet (it was his Chicago colleague, Arnold Harberger, who led all the Chilean graduate students in that right-wing government). Yet, he tells all about it in his autobiography, how his Nobel Prize was almost not awarded due to Marxist influence around the world blaming him.

Any personal significance I have in the libertarian movement is due entirely to the influence Milton Friedman had at the University of Chicago, and the large collection of fellow students he attracted to campus, who became my friends over the 17 years I lived in the campus neighborhood. He wrote in his autobiography how he realized a great university is mostly great because students learn mostly from their fellow students, not from their professors, and I think that is true. The bright light of Milton Friedman and the great students who surrounded him surely attracted the people from whom I learned the most in those years.

It is well known that many Mexican emigrants are from rural areas and come to the United States to work in the fields. It is also well known that American agriculture is obscenely subsidized by the government.

Here is a quote from an L.A. Times article last summer, “1986 Amnesty Frames Immigration Debate” (June 3, 2006)

California farmers, too, hail the Senate proposal for correcting what they say was a key problem of the 1986 amnesty: the widespread exodus of migrant laborers from the fields once they received legal status. The Senate bill requires newly legalized farmworkers to stay in their jobs three to five years before moving to other industries.

[REQUIRE the farmworkers to stay? Indentured?]

“I think the [Senate bill] will work much better for both workers and growers,” said Roy Gabriel, director of labor affairs for the California Farm Bureau. “It will stabilize the workforce and ensure the survival of the agricultural industry.”

I think if the government would stop subsidizing rich farmers, many of them would go out of business. This would be good for the rest of America. It would also stimulate the import of many fruits and vegetables from places like Mexico, where the farm workers already live.

Do you suppose that might have an effect on America’s “illegal immigration” problem?

First, see my message [click here: message below] celebrating the Montana and Missouri Libertarian successes taking voters away from Conrad Burns and Jim Talent. Notice that I say, “taking VOTERS away,” not the more common term - taking votes away. Those were not Burn’s or Talent’s votes; they were individual voters who chose Jones and Gilmour instead of them. I assume it was due to the message Jones and Gilmour were telling people in Montana and Missouri.

But look at this question, from the perspective of Power Politics. Dogmatic Social Conservatives (DSC) have lost the 2006 elections BIG TIME! They have had a good run with Bush and the Republicans for the past 12 years, but it’s all over now. They have shot their wad, and missed.

The Republican Party will become the minority in the House of Representatives.

In the Senate, it will continue to have strong control, because under Senate Rules there must be 60 votes to move anything. Bush won’t have to veto very much, since the Pelosi Democrats won’t really be able to do more than to bluster and pass dead letters about health care, minimum wages, and global warming.

Impotence in the House of Representatives is strongly to be desired. But it will be exciting.

Sadly, the tax cuts of 2001-03 are surely not permanent. As Bruce Bartlet has shown from official data, “Who Pays the Income Tax?”, the rich are already paying almost all the taxes. This burden will only go up in 2009-10 if the Democrats in the House do nothing. What do you expect?

But, cheer three times, the excreable Dogmatic Social Conservatives are in a corner; they should stay there. The income tax cuts are going to move to center stage, particularly as the economic growth we have enjoyed since 2001 begins to slow down in 2007-08. The Democratic Congress will have to accept the accusations that their pro-tax, pro-environmentalist, pro-union policies are responsible for slowing the economy.

John McCain is sitting very high right now because the Republicans, hungry for power and wanting to keep the presidency in 2009, will look more favorably on “moderate” McCain. The DSC will also know their most serious philosophical enemies are in the Democratic Party - but they can’t dominate the Republican Party without destroying its effectiveness. So, the social issues are checkmated.