A modest proposal for immigration reform

This is a five-part package. The details are flexible.

1. Those now in the country illegally:

-Shall register for work documents and resident visas within 180 days of enactment of this bill. Requests shall be granted summarily.

-Shall be ineligible for naturalization unless the person immigrated under the age of eighteen.

-Shall account for all unpaid taxes and commit to an equitable repayment plan.

-Shall, if they worked for wages not in compliance with applicable wage laws, be paid the difference by their employer(s). This restitution shall be subject to taxation.

-Shall, if they fail to comply with the above, be summarily deported if subsequently apprehended by law enforcement.

2. Those applying for permission to enter the country or work here:

-Shall, unless convicted of an offence proscribed by our laws, be summarily granted permission.

-Shall be ineligible for federally instituted welfare programs. States shall retain the prerogative to admit them.

3. People born in the United States shall be considered citizens only if at least one parent is a citizen. Citizenship shall be granted to minor children upon the naturalization of the parent if so requested.

4. Documented aliens convicted of a felony or any three misdemeanors shall be summarily deported and ineligible to return. Eligibility shall be restored if sufficient convictions are overturned to bring the alien’s record within this limit.

5. Employers shall verify all workers’ status. Employers shall be subject to a penalty if they know (or should know) that a worker is illegal.

Cool bumper stickers

Bruce over at No Looking Backwards has a new bumper sticker out:

Available here.

Should be an easy case

I’m not foolish enough to think  that my post from a few months back had anything to do with it, but the NRA has filed a complaint against Seattle over their illegal gun bans. Since the policy is demonstrably contrary to state law, the suit seems like pretty low hanging fruit to me. More as it comes…

The plain truth

I saw this today (h/t to Instapundit), and I had an epiphany. You see, we’ve decided to home-school our kids for at least part of their educations, and I know we’ll face questions as to why. Well, here’s at least part of it. I can envision one of our kids wanting to do something completely innocent like Zachary, and I would have to say no. Inevitably, (s)he would ask why and I would have to tell the truth. Unfortunately, the answer from me would be something like, “Your school is run by insane people who have lost touch with reality.” With the truth laid that bare, could you send a child back to that place? I couldn’t.

Meet the future

Caught this on All Things Considered yesterday. I want to examine the heart of the story, a real cautionary tale about 19-year-old Brandi Terry:

Terry had run a red light. Police checked her phone and discovered she had sent a text within seconds of the accident. Terry shattered her right ankle and broke her upper right arm in half. She couldn’t walk for six months and had an agonizing recovery.

Makes you remember how important it is to get driving right, doesn’t it? Brandi was very lucky not to have died in that crash; one would hope that she learns from the incident.

She got better, got another car and tried to stop texting.

Got another car? What’s this?

I could talk about the obvious problems attendant with texting while driving but I don’t want to. There’s a much larger disaster waiting undiscussed in the background here. The article doesn’t mention it, but I’m assuming she didn’t go down to the car farm and pick out a free car with free car insurance (especially not after totalling her last one by running a stop sign!). No way. It’s almost certain that her parents were morally and mentally deficient enough to buy their idiot daughter another car and to let her keep her cell phone! I say mentally deficient because of the obviously poor risk assessment they exercised. I make the moral judgement based on their glaring delinquency in disciplining their child. It’s wonderful that she survived, and I’m sure the injuries and recovery were a grueling punishment, but how can you cave in like that? You’re failing in your duty to protect her and you’re putting other people in harm’s way by putting her back on the road.

So rather than fulfilling their parental duty and administering some loving correction with a figurative two-by-four, Mommy and Daddy took the low road and satisfied their little Princess’s every whim. The results were depressingly predictable:

Within a year of her first accident, Terry did it again — she slammed into the back of semi while she was texting. This time, she escaped injury.

Same article, different section:

School’s out in Salt Lake City, and Pree Tautelli and Brittany Lui and their friends are piling into a Mini Cooper. They didn’t like the thought that their parents would have a device in their car to block calls and texts.
“I love texting and driving; it’s the in thing,” Tautelli says. “Everyone does it — who doesn’t?”

Well, I don’t. I actually would like to survive my trip. But let’s get back to the point. Kids, parents are meant to be unpopular dictators. Our whims are your laws; you don’t have to like them. That may seem to run counter to my libertarianism, but let’s not forget that children are dependents and reliant on us for moral instruction. If you have kids, please love them enough to be firm with them. If you do it right, they’ll get it someday.

Another satisfied customer!

I caught this on NPR this afternoon and chuckled. As Glenn Reynolds would say, “Hope and… same!”

Stupid bumper stickers

The other week in Seattle I saw this gem on a car on Madison:

The complete lack of thought evident here is stunning. How exactly do we do what is suggested? Presumably this is a call for political action, so let’s examine how we can apply government’s only basic resource: force. First, we could use force to take money from the haves and use it to boost the incomes of the poor. Of course, this is just welfare, so it’s probably not what the author had in mind. Second, we could lower the official standard of poverty to something below where everyone is – perhaps a sloping poverty line based on time spent poor. This is a rather inoffensive use of force since it would only directed against the government employees who have to use this dishonest benchmark. It is, however, a pretty gross adulteration of the truth, and no honorable person would really sit right with that. Finally, the government could enact a literal time limit on being poor, complete with legal sanctions for offenders. If you’re poor for too long, the police come over and ticket you. If you can’t pay your ticket you go to jail. If this appeals to you, you just may want to consider that I have just proposed criminalizing the existence of a class of people.

That’s it. There aren’t any other options, assuming we’re actually after a political solution. Remember folks, always check your sound bites to make sure they actually work.

Anti-eulogy

Edward M Kennedy: 2/22/1932 – 8/25/2009

Few men have been loved by so many for so little reason.  You began life like your brothers, the son of an affluent family benefiting from the fortune started with insider trading, pump-and-dump schemes, and allegedly bootlegging. You epitomized legacy admissions by graduating from Harvard despite your average grades in high school and your later (temporary) expulsion for cheating. Surely you always looked proudly on your service in the Army: two years stationed in Europe affording you plenty of time to tour the continent while the Forgotten War raged halfway around the world.

Despite never having held a real job in your life you connected to the common man. Your eloquence and charm were undenible assets and certainly served you well, but your most prized possession was undoubtedly your name. Your first opponent said it best:

Teddy, if your name was Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.  -Edward McCormack, Jr.

Your contributions to America ranged from marginal to disastrous. You were surely known best for championing causes that shrank liberty and grew government. You were a notably generous contributor of taxpayer money to non-taxpayers. At your best you were a leader of your party. At your worst you killed a woman through criminal negligence and consorted with terrorist front organizations. Though you swore on multiple occasions to support and defend the Constitution, your respect for that document was limited to superficial twistings of it to justify your political desires. You were a career politician from a family of career politicians. If the collective voters of Massachusetts had any ethical sense you would have had to get a job decades ago.

Rest in peace.

Learning from everything

Being the father of a three-year-old, I get to watch the old classic children’s movies again as an adult. You know, a lot of them have a bit to offer us. Here’s an excerpt from my favorite song from “Mary Poppins.”

If you invest your tuppence
Wisely in the bank
Safe and sound
Soon that tuppence,
Safely invested in the bank,
Will compound

And you’ll achieve that sense of conquest
As your affluence expands
In the hands of the directors
Who invest as propriety demands

You see, Michael, you’ll be part of
Railways through Africa
Dams across the Nile
Fleets of ocean greyhounds
Majestic, self-amortizing canals
Plantations of ripening tea

All from tuppence, prudently
Fruitfully, frugally invested
In the, to be specific,
In the Dawes, Tomes
Mousely, Grubbs
Fidelity Fiduciary Bank!

There, in a throwaway number shared by the stern father and his ridiculous boss, is the essence of capitalism. The bank provides a primitive mutual fund; rather than stocks the bank selects projects and businesses to finance. The borrowers use the money to complete their goal and hopefully make a profit. Most of the loans get repaid with interest. The bank keeps a portion of the interest to pay its costs and maintain profit of its own. The remainder of the interest is returned to the depositor.

Doesn’t sound very sexy, I know. But look at the possible outcomes there – it’s not a zero-sum proposition. Everyone has a chance to win simultaneously. True, your bank could make many poor loan decisions and lose all your money. As a borrower, your idea may not be as good as you thought or you may be a poor manager. Those are aberrations, though. The system is designed so that when everything works as planned, everyone comes out ahead of where he was before. Look at the results, too. A man with a great idea has a chance to make it happen because of capitalism. All he has to do is convince a financier of the merits of the idea and be willing to share some of the profits with him. The outcome is technological advancement, construction, and a general elevation of the standard of living.

Now the movie is drawn mostly from the childrens’ perspective so it obscures some of the magnificence of the institution.  On the depositor’s level it’s easy to forget that we assume the role of investor when we put money in the bank. We think of them as vaults for our money, nothing more than secure piggy banks or mattresses. It’s really hard to tell someone who just lost his shirt he should have looked more closely at the bank he chose, but that’s reality. It’s also really easy to forget the role our deposits play in advancing society; it takes a broad dispassionate view and the ability to look beyond the immediate. You probably knew saving money was a good thing for you, it turns out it’s good for civilization too. The children think with their emotions and want to use their money to buy birdseed, but their father sees the big picture and tries to teach them a life lesson. Perhaps it’s a bit too soon.

Mr. Banks eventually lightens up some, but maybe the movie’s not totally committed to ridiculing the system. After all, we do have this as one of Mary’s last lines:

Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.

Think without your emotions. Then if you can afford to indulge them for a little while after you’re done, go wild.

Gaming the system

On my NPR app this morning:

“Kennedy asked Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law to give Gov. Deval Patrick, a fellow Democrat and supporter of President Barack Obama, the ability to appoint an interim replacement to Kennedy’s seat should Kennedy be unable to continue serving.”

But I thought Democrats believed in direct election of senators and more chances to vote. Surely in Massachusetts of all places implementing Kennedy’s request would overthrow decades of liberal tradition.

“The state last changed its succession law in 2004 to require the special election.”

Oh. That was unexpected. Now that I think of it, wasn’t there something going on that year – something nationally significant? I forget what it was…

“Before that the governor was allowed to name a successor. At the time, Democrats were worried that then-Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would be able to fill any vacancy created if Democratic Sen. John Kerry was elected president.”

Ah, yes. There was the possibility of another senator leaving mid-term and the Democrats wanted to change the rules to hedge their bets.  But now Teddy wants to change back so he can help name his successor. I just want to say that I am shocked – shocked! to find this sort of two-faced behavior in politics.

I have nothing nice to say about Ted Kennedy. Let’s just say that if he were trapped in a sinking car, I wouldn’t even call 911.