As a pro-immigrant conservative, I have held my tongue, furious about the fact that reforms of an outdated immigration system have been held hostage by arguments over mostly low-skilled Latino undocumented workers entering the country illegally, both by media conservatives and open border advocates. I don't particularly care for the Mexican President, presiding over job opportunities as low as $5 daily, telling Americans how we should get down on our knees to God thanking undocumented workers for making America a successful economy; he certainly neglects to mention that said workers send back to Mexico tens of billions of dollars in valuable currency. I don't like to hear enabler business owners illegally hiring these workers moaning about how, unlike their competitors, they can't execute a viable business plan without undocumented workers. Let's get one thing straight: At least 3 in 4 workers both in farming and in construction are not undocumented Latino immigrants. During the Great Depression, fewer foreign visitors migrated to the US to work as unemployed American workers were more willing to consider relevant work.
I, like most pro-business conservatives, want an above-board temporary visiting worker system, which can work at the margin to deal with any perceived gap in labor supply and demand. As I've mentioned in past posts, we had such a system (the Bracero system), which expired in 1964, under heavy union pressure. But at the same time, we have to understand an open border constitutes a significant vulnerability to organized criminal elements--and potentially to terrorists.
Let's get to the question of walls or fences; Homeland Secretary Napolitano and every other dim-witted progressive will solemnly assure you that fences of any kind are ineffective: you can always scale a longer ladder (or dig underneath). Why shouldn't we believe them? After all, impound lots don't work in keeping determined motorists from recovering their vehicles, and RFID tags and exit sensors can't stop the determined electronics shoplifter... (Private businesses love to throw away money on security personnel and equipment that are ineffective--yeah, right...)
Let's just say with satellite technology, motion detectors, and layered barriers (among other approaches used by secured facilities), one can significantly increase the risk, time, effort and cost of entry. In fact, some ranchers have noted that traffic was dramatically affected by the building of a fence.
The biggest threat to our security is not the desperate gardener looking for work on the American side of the border; it's from an administration in a state of denial which deliberately underestimates the nature and danger of unauthorized border infiltration in a post-9/11 age, has consciously underinvested in border infrastructure and personnel, uses the carrot of amnesty for undocumented workers to motivate political support, does not proactively adjust strategy or tactics to the clear threat sent by drug cartels in firefights with northern Mexican law enforcement, and made a questionable appointment in the integration of ICE with local law enforcement by hiring former Houston police chief Harold Hurtt, whom backed away from participating in the (immunity shielding) federal 287(g) program, even after recidivist illegal immigrants killed a fellow officer.
Obama Understands Only Political Spin, Not Real Leadership
We have seen this intellectually pretentious, unqualified, thin-skinned, unproductive excuse of an incompetent President repeat this pathetic, unsupported, oversimplistic, predictable pattern of setting up a straw man opponent, dismissing legitimate criticism as political posturing, and ridiculing his opponents as standard operating procedure. You might figure a President, whom has only one national poll of out 8 covered by Real Clear Politics reaching a high of 50% and his party essentially tied with the GOP out of 5 national polls, would actually want to take the opposition more seriously. What ever became of the charming, post-partisan leader? Instead, he tries to convince the American people whatever preposterous 2000-page sausages dreamed up by partisan Democratic reconciliation conferees dream up was his original idea from the get-go. That's because he knows very well if he put his own legislation in front of the Democratic incumbents, whose devotion for their party leader is second only to their reelection hopes, it would be picked apart. So he stands back, lets his party members fight it out among themselves, and signs onto whatever emerges... That's leadership for you--like the infamous Clintonian finger in the wind. Even Upton Sinclair would be shocked by what's inside this legislative sausage: welcome to The Jungle.
Granted, I don't think Boehner used the best analogy by comparing the financial legislative
But let's return to Obama's condescending remarks that Boehner just doesn't get it. In fact, Obama completely ignores Boehner's next remark: "What's most needed is more transparency and better enforcement by regulators". For example, there was already an industry move to run derivative trades through a clearinghouse. What Obama doesn't address is the intrinsic opaqueness of Congress ceding regulatory details to future decisions by questionable government bureaucrats. What Obama doesn't deal with are redundancies or inconsistencies among various regulators, an unpredictable economic environment (e.g., why was Lehman Brothers allowed to fail but not others?), the fact that two essentially bankrupt GSE's dominating about half the mortgage market, implicitly guaranteed by the federal government, putting taxpayers on the hook by snapping up high risk loans.
Boehner doesn't get it? What administration made Goldman Sach whole for its derivative contracts with an essentially bankrupt AIG? You can make all the allegations you want about predatory lending (or, more relevantly, predatory borrowing), but a bank that doesn't find a secondary market (i.e., the GSE's) to sell risky loans doesn't write risky loans, because it's then stuck with them. And Obama fails to appreciate the reason that too many people were in the market because interest rates were lower than they should have been and banks were writing gimmick low-collateral loans at the top of a bubble market to questionable credit risks, not even verifying stable income. Housing boom/bust periods are not exactly unknown phenomena; we saw an earlier down market in the early 1990's. Many people, including myself, had been arguing the housing market was unsustainable by the mid-2000's; the only issue was the timing of the burst. Now Obama can disingenuously blame greedy bankers, or "Wild West Bush Administration regulators" all he wants, but he's confusing symptoms with the disease. By the mid-2000's American savings were at historic lows, credit and home ownership at historic highs. Obama wasn't interested in lowering taxpayer exposure to the GSE's; he was fixated at the time on alleged predatory lending. Talk about being penny-wise, pound-foolish! Even assuming a house is repossessed, the bank is still left with a house with declining value in a down market that it has to valuate in accordance with accounting rules--on a possible or probable path to zombie status.
Political Cartoon
Chuck Asay shows Congress is on the job when it comes to pointing fingers at a British-run corporation spilling oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and Congress knows how to tax banks and spend money. But when it comes to the Congress investigating itself for failing to look out for the American taxpayer in guaranteeing subprime mortgage notes purchased by the GSE's--well, we will just have to wait for that. Because everybody knows the first thing you need to do after government fails is to express your faith in the ability of government bureaucrats to perform even better with additional responsibilities.... Why worry about those pesky mortgage loans? It's not like homes are often people's biggest investments... No, sir! Sen. Durbin will tell you he knows how to set priorities, because he's looking out for your debit card fees! After all, that's the top item concerning voters, not things like jobs, Afghanistan, illegal immigration, etc.
Quote of the Day
One picture is worth a thousand words.
Fred R. Barnard
Musical Interlude: Chart Hits of 1980
The Pretender, "Brass in Pocket"
Irena Cara, "Fame"
Elton John, "Little Jeannie"
Benny Mardones, "Into the Night" tweak the lyrics: 18 years old
Billy Preston & Syreeta Wright, "With You I'm Born Again" Sigh! One of my favorite duets!
