Or, to be more correct, at least part of the system. Some of the time.
First, there was the Emperor AG and Premier Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, getting his, and a reasonable person could hope he’s got still more coming to him, given the pompous hypocrisy of the crusades on which he embarked before his fall.
Today’s news, however, on Alaska’s Ted Stevens, is equally satisfying to read. Charged with public corruption, and seemingly certain to be found guilty given the brazen and entitled nature with which he sought the spoils of his office, the only shame here might be that, at 86 years old, he’s unlikely to be incarcerated for the term he deserves, if at all. He’s been a national joke, most recently at least, for the Bridge to Nowhere pork fiasco, and his indictment cements his status as an embarrassment to Alaskans, Republicans, the Senate, and Americans.
Most people think that there’s a general presumption of innocence in America, but that’s only true within the court system, and in the issues that surround the court. I’m happy to report that my odds of serving on any jury of Mr. Stevens’ peers are zero, and I’m neither the judge nor the prosecutor in his case, so I owe him no such presumption.
He’s dirty, and the only thing better than having him indicted and removed from office would be to step back forty years, and take he and all other grandees of his sort out of the political process entirely. Glad-handing thieves, selling the citizens’ best interests for their personal aggrandizement, are among the lowest forms of life in America.
In an item in the May 5, 2008 WSJ, I saw the “Fund Track” column, by Daisy Maxey, entitled “Democratic Booster Blue Fund Group Has Been Singing the Blues Lately”
The focus of the story was on a small Washington DC based fund that’s done poorly of late.
Blue Fund Group is having a rough year.
Blue Investment Management LLC, the fund group’s Washington, D.C., investment adviser, has liquidated Blue Small Cap Fund, which managed less than $1 million.
It is now in the process of changing the name of its Blue Large Cap Fund, which has a little more than $10 million in assets, to, simply, Blue Fund. So far this year, that fund has underperformed both its large-cap growth category and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, according to Chicago investment-research firm Morningstar Inc.
Odd, that. Not the results, particularly, but the fact that the story appears at all. “What’s the problem?”, I wondered, and what makes this tiddler of a fund worthy of coverage in the WSJ? I read on…
In addition, in a rather odd development, $9.5 million of the large-cap fund’s assets were invested recently by a trust that has said it may hedge its bets on some of the fund’s holdings.
Blue Investment Management was formed in 2006 to invest in companies that “act blue” and “give blue,” those that engage in practices consistent with progressive values and give the majority of their political contributions to Democratic candidates.
Following a proprietary managed index of U.S. companies, the large-cap fund invests in “blue” companies in the S&P 500 index, while the small-cap offering had invested in “blue” companies in the Russell 2000 index.
Additional info, according to an April 2007 article at Morningstar:
The Blue funds (Blue Large Cap and Blue Small Cap), launched late last year, invest in companies that give a majority of their political contributions to Democratic candidates and organizations, in addition to passing various standard social screens. There are no funds focused specifically on Republican-leaning companies, though the Free Enterprise Action fund (FEAOX), launched two years ago, promotes free enterprise and opposes shareholder resolutions that might dampen companies’ profitability, including most SRI-type proposals. Also, the Camco Investors Fund (CAMCX) specifically uses socially conservative screening criteria, as do several of the religious funds we looked at in our earlier column, notably the Ave Maria and Timothy Plan funds.
Quintuple odd.
No “Republican-focused” funds? Because nobody would buy them, I presume, preferring instead to just focus on companies well-situated to make money.
Aside from the fact that the new biggest investor in Blue Funds may choose to hedge its bet, taking contrary positions to that of its now-majority owned fund, the slack-jawed investment thesis behind the fund is a real eye opener.
How is it, I wonder, that someone was able to correlate the political contribution tendencies of companies, and then to target them for investment? Wait - I’m not done yet: Of course it’s simple, though a bit labor-intensive, to do such a thing, but having done such a thing, how could someone have done such a bang up job of choosing a thesis with a correlation apparently approaching -1? And then put client money behind such a spastic idea? And still slept at night?
It’s possible to grotesquely overthink investment theses, even when, unlike the strategists of the Blue Fund, you leave political proclivities out of the mix. Running such a tiny fund, and apparently running it nearly into the ground, causing closure of the “small cap” side of the fund, abandonment of the “large cap” moniker on the other half, and causing the new largest investor (sort of) to consider hedging its exposure to your attempts at splitting atoms with your mind (and political views) seems like an item one would leave off one’s resume.
The same goes for all “Socially Responsible Investing”, if you ask me, not that you did.
Unless, of course, the goal isn’t to make money at all.
Granted, it’s been a tough year in the markets, but it’s not been impossible to make money. For comparative purposes, one of the things I do on a daily basis, with a very small portion of my time, is participate in running a proprietary hedge fund. The assets under management seem similar to those reported for the Blue Fund family by the WSJ, yet our focus is solely on making profits. And overall, we’re up more than 40% so far this year.
It’s not impossible, and properly done, it’s not even particularly difficult. The difference might be that there’s no ideology behind our investment choices, and no attempts at claiming correlations that don’t exist in the real world.
There’s nothing wrong with social, or political, responsibility. Neither has much of anything to do with investing, however. I don’t invest to help those in need or to advance a political point of view - I invest to make profits. To help those in need, I give to the Red Cross. And to advance a political point of view, I vote.
In investing, as in many other things, avoiding confusion about why you’re doing it is a fundamental prerequisite to being even mildly competent.
Conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi appeared to clinch Italy’s national election Monday, making it likely that the media mogul will return as prime minister for a third time. Berlusconi’s center-right Freedom People party was set to get 164 seats in the upper house of parliament, the senate, while the Democratic Party of center-left rival Walter Veltroni was expected to win 139 seats, early projections showed. Though votes were still being counted, Veltroni called Berlusconi to concede defeat.
The election was called in a rush after the previous government, headed by center-left Prime Minister Romano Prodi, collapsed in January after only 20 months in office.
Assuming that the election plays out on present form, I’m not sure which I find funnier, Veltroni (about whom I’ve nothing bad to say) calling for concession when clearly things aren’t going his way, or the fact that the reporter was able to write the story with a straight face.
This, of course, brings to mind Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that Barack Obama would look good in Vice President’s shorts.
The candidate is Murray Sabrin, a university professor who once ran on the Libertarian ticket for governor of New Jersey. He’s now running for U.S. Senate as a Republican, and last week received an endorsement from political soul-mate Ron Paul. More specifically, Paul sent out a so-called “Money Bomb” for Sabrin, which is basically an email asking supporters to immediately make an online donation. The idea is to raise lots of money in a single day, and then use the windfall as evidence of growing grass-roots support.
He got his money bomb, because the Paul-\bots are nothing if not slavish in their devotion to the directives of their jingoistic hero, Dr. Ron Paul. And it blew up Sabrin’s site, but good.
Soon after Paul lit the fuse, however, the Sabrin website crashed. It and some associated email accounts were down for approximately 16 hours, before being put back online. The campaign was furious. It had discussed the expected traffic surge with Network Solutions beforehand, and that it had been assured the site would be fine.
Or not, as it turned out - Network Solutions isn’t responsible for design and coding errors in its clients’ sites, and Sabrin’s site was buggy.
This is where it gets just bizarre. The Sabrin campaign seemed to have two choices at this point: Either accept that the crash was caused by its own coding mistake, or blame Network Solutions for having faulty technology. But it went for an unexpected third avenue: Accuse Network Solutions of taking down the website for partisan political purposes.
Which of course Sabrin’s campaign did. Utterly implausibly, but there you have it. For details, click the link to Dan’s story - it’s a good read.
As a larger issue, no wonder people are falling serially in love with Barack Obama - he promises, in some feathery and highly general way, to deliver us from this sort of functional retardation.
It’s all crap, of course - not specifically because it’s Mr. Obama (a fascinating & intelligent gentleman, good with a turn of a phrase, though married to an apparently divisive and demogogic wife and devoid of either the experience or anything that passes for coherent strategy to, you know, actually run the country). It’s crap because he’s a politician, and they’re all full of crap, as they pretty much have to be in order to aspire to the position they seek.
If Mr. Obama’s, or anyone else’s, putative “war on cynicism” had a ghost of a chance of succeeding (and it does not), one of the first things they would propose would be that, every time someone trots out a ludicrous conspiracy theory designed solely to motivate the lowest quartiles of the IQ spectrum, the government could declare a moment of silence, followed by a moment of pointing at that person and laughing.
From the Los Angeles Times, via a WSJ email snippet this morning:
Los Angeles Times: While in private business, Mitt Romney — whose presidential campaign cites his record of closing state tax loopholes as Massachusetts governor — used shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show. Mr. Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, but his aides and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Mr. Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.
Sadly, this tells me nothing I didn’t already know about Mitt Romney - he’s clearly a smart guy, and he’s clearly a competent businessman. Whether either of those makes him the best suited presidential candidate is both another thing completely and a matter which doesn’t concern me at all right now.
However, the intimation that there’s some undercurrent of hypocrisy here strikes me as overbaked by half - he used the system, properly & as designed, to benefit those to whom he had a fiduciary duty. The fact that he and his partners boosted their profits from having satisfied their clients strikes me as precisely the result he expected, and deserved.
Surely there are other crucial things about him we need to know, but this ain’t on that list.
Back on May 21, 2007, I saw an article that I almost, almost thought worthy enough of derision that it justified a post. For reasons that now escape me, I decided otherwise at the time. However, as sometimes occurs, it’s again become current, so I’ll revisit.
A panic attack move into private equity?
By Robert Elder | Monday, May 21, 2007, 02:07 PM
Writing in the May 18 issue of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, Dallas investor and state of Texas pension official Frederick “Shad” Rowe tees off on the leaders of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas pension fund.
Rowe examines the Texas teacher fund’s recently announced plans to move massive amounts of its holdings into private equity and out of publicly traded stocks. The strategy strikes him as the investment equivalent of a panic attack.
(Rowe notes that the Texas Pension Review board, which he chairs, has no authority over TRS investment strategy and that he’s writing as a private citizen.)
Rowe writes that the teacher fund is trying to juice returns by moving into so-called alternative investments (hedge funds, buyout firms, hard assets such as timber, toll roads) a little late in the game. Maybe even just in time for the private equity bubble to pop and the very stocks the teacher fund is selling to rise in value.
Please ignore for a moment the fact that private equity and hedge funds are not the same thing - Rowe’s core point, I think, was that high return comes with high risk. Big shock, that. But it appeared, in May, not to have occurred to the managers of TRS. I don’t know whether TRS had gotten around to the absurd reallocation plans they announced at the time, increasing allotment to alternative investments from 3% to 35%. But Mr Rowe had the opportunity to weigh in again on the subject in a story from today’s WSJ:
Pension Managers Rethink
Their Love of Hedge Funds
By CRAIG KARMIN
August 27, 2007; Page C1
Many public pension funds in recent years have become eager to invest in hedge funds. Now, some are getting cold feet.
Pension-fund managers from Louisiana to Ohio are saying they may slow their push into these funds after the recent losses suffered at big hedge funds — including ones run by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and AQR Capital Management — have reinforced some of the risks.
Indeed, one critic suggests that pensions would be foolish to keep pursuing hedge funds. “It’s like planning a vacation to an exotic land, and finding out that there’s an outbreak of bubonic plague,” says Frederick Rowe, chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which provides oversight of Texas public pension funds.
I’m not certain which is more admirable - consistency, correctness, or the fact he avoided doing an overt Icky Shuffle and rubbing their nose in it. But in any event, Mr Rowe was stating the obvious back in May, all the while not claiming there was anything inherently wrong with hedge funds or their doppelgangers in the alternative investment universe, just that the TRS was clearly not thinking things through in their sudden mania for the flavor of the month.
Good for him, and, I guess, good for the teachers covered by the TRS. I have no dog in the race, but I hope the managers of the TRS paid attention back in May, for the sake of their beneficiaries.
No shock, but he’s being run out of town on a rail. Not alone among those with an opinion on the matter, I only think it’s a shame that he’s being run out for all the wrong reasons. The US Attorney firings? Pfft. Not a big deal - he, and the White House, have been well within bounds on the firings themselves, as previously discussed. Severe missteps, such as the McNulty Memorandum, should be considered embarrassments to him and the department, but are just horrifically bad administration, not criminal acts. As also previously discussed, his timid, goofy, and cackhanded defense of his boss, his office, and himself has been so inept that it’s been embarrassing to watch.
Never one to favor viewing people humiliating themselves (and thus, my aversion to most forms of reality TV), it’s been a cringeworthy handful of months, and the ordeal will soon be over.
Based on the WSJ story linked above and other sources, it seems there’s a race to the bottom of the barrel in search of his replacement. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff? What an awful choice he’d be, and not just because he looks like a character who could have played alongside Michael Keaton in Beetlejuice. He’s not obviously competent, and while that would make him a perfect stand-in for Gonzales, it would seem that now, in the last 17 months of the Bush administration, they ought to attempt to at least raise their game at the Justice Department.
Chertoff, far more so than the other choices mentioned in the WSJ article (Mueller, Johnson), strikes me a choice only slightly better than dragging Harriet Miers back out of mothballs and propping her up for yet another position beyond her scope.
Also odd, there were several names in the version of the WSJ story made available this morning (the link above is to a front-page version in tomorrow’s print edition, but earlier today it was the breaking news version). Louis Freeh and Ted Olson were both mentioned, and either of them strikes me as a potentially apt choice, so it comes as no shock to find them no longer on the list, as reported by the WSJ. The IHT version of the story, available here, retains mention of Olson, but also omits Freeh.
Like Rove’s resignation, the Democrats seem to have plans to continue their chase, harrying him as best they can in search of crimes not committed. Life would, I think, be far easier for the Dems if they just took what Bushies hand them on a silver platter (incompetence, ham-fistedness, PR stone-deafness) and ran with it, rather than inventing new crusades on which to wander. But that’s just me.
I bring you David Gross of San Francisco, who not only:
…asked his bosses for a radical pay cut, enough so he wouldn’t have to pay taxes to support the war.
but
In any event, his employer turned him down and he quit.
Which, I guess, good for him, standing up for his convictions that way and all. Left unanswered, at least for now, is whether federal taxes are levied on the wages of “guests of the Federal Government”. Why would I be curious about that? Because
Gross, 38, now works on a contract basis, and last year he refused to pay self-employment taxes.
All by itself, that doesn’t distinguish him from a lot of people. The AP story notes that between 8 and 10 thousand people fail to pay their taxes for reasons similar to those of Gross. Contained in the story, at a meta-level, is the fact that this particular non-Rhodes Scholar allowed the AP to write a story about him evading taxes. Nothing like calling out the IRS by name to get them to leave you alone. Posing in two pre-mug shots for the story? A priceless addition, though I’m sure the Feds could already have found him whenever and wherever they needed to.
Of course, these days, he won’t end up becoming a guest of the Federal Government:
Unlike the days when Thoreau was sent to prison in a tax protest against the Mexican-American War, modern war tax protesters rarely go to prison, according to tax resisters. The IRS may take their money from wages and bank accounts - with penalties and interest - after sending a series of letters.
“They’re very polite, which makes it a little boring,” said Rosa Packard of Greenwich, a longtime anti-war tax protester.
But if he thinks he is going to avoid collection of his taxes owed, by hook or by crook, after having trumpeted his resistance on a national newswire, he’s perhaps not smart enough to be gainfully employed, as a contractor or otherwise.
Addendum - Mr. Gross expands on his and his fellow protesters’ thoughts and methods, with emphasis on the actual question I posed:
A frequent challenge to conscientious tax resisters whose resistance leads to fines and penalties is “won’t the government just end up with more in the end?”
The Ghandi quote that follows the snippet above is interesting and informative, if not completely dispositive.
Unlike Mr. Gross’ first commenter Ken (bottom), I have no desire to see Gross locked up, and wish him the best in what I consider to be a Quixotic quest, even though I disagree with it.
As seen more than a month ago in a piece entited “Non-Campaigning“, I hypothesized:
Picture this: Bloomberg is a Republican in name only, and no, I’m not using that term in a derogatory fashion. Back when he was a Democrat, to the best of my knowledge, he could adequately have been described as a Democrat in name only, too.
He’s a capable politician, and a capable executive in charge of a large and complex polity. (Please ignore, for the purpose of this analysis, his nannyish actions on smoking and trans-fats, well-intentioned as I’m sure they were) These attributes seem far more interesting than some clap-on/clap-off political party affiliation. And as a result, the presumption that he would or should run in the race for the Republican presidential nomination strikes me as anything but a foregone conclusion.
Hardly a brilliant observation, if we’re being honest with each other.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to leave the Republican Party fueled talk he might launch an independent bid for president later this year. It also underscored Republicans’ dim prospects for 2008, and pointed to broader concerns about both parties’ performance.
In a statement, the mayor again suggested he has no plans to run for president. He said he was merely matching his party registration with his nonpartisan policies, an apparent effort to distance himself from the rancor that has marked U.S. politics in recent years.
…
“A nonpartisan approach has worked wonders in New York,” he added. “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology. Working together, there’s no limit to what we can do.”
Golly, that sounds almost as good and exciting as it is utterly unworkable. While I wish Hizzoner well, just because something works in NYC doesn’t mean it will work everywhere else, let alone anywhere else. The differences between the largest interest groups in New York, however they might be arrayed on any given day, are trivial compared both to the number and the size of the differences when politics is taken out of the boroughs.
Bloomberg appears to be a smart, honest man. He also appears poorly versed in the exercise of complexity theory and strategy he would get in a far less homogenous society than that found in New York. He seems, almost, to be basing this Quixotic wish for universal harmony and nonpartisanship on an assumption that he can get all the players in any given melodrama together in a room, rhetorically bash some heads, and get on to the next task. The bully pulpit of the US Presidency, sad to say, isn’t nearly powerful enough to facilitate this.
Which is a relief, really - partisanship, for all the ugliness it engenders in its more extreme manifestations (e.g. since Nov 2000), is the way that diametrically opposed interests are resolved. Some things can be fought about and solved. Far more require that they be fought about, fought about some more, sulked over, rethought, fought about again, and either given up or won, depending on the partisan politics of the day. Partisanship, at a level hopefully less than that found today, is a necessary part of the process, all due respect to Mr. Bloomberg.
There’s another matter here, perhaps a big one: Nobody’s really going to spend a lot of time questioning Bloomberg’s intelligence, at least not if they value their time. However, his political judgment is open to serious question, including the possibility that he actually does harbor the absurd thought that the US is just like New York, just bigger. Specifically, have a look at the first item in today’s version of the WSJ Opinionjournal Best of the Web.
In that item, which James Taranto subtitled “Bloomberg’s Bigotry” (a characterization I think is overripe, and probably meant tongue-in-cheek), you’ll find an excerpt from a speech Bloomberg gave Monday at Google’s headquarters, as reported in today’s NY Sun.
Mr. Bloomberg’s freewheeling question-and-answer session was peppered with the kind of provocative, blunt talk that could appeal to some voters while alienating others. “It’s probably because of our bad educational system, but the percentage of people who believe in creationalism is really scary for a country that’s going to have to compete in a world where science and medicine require a better understanding,” he said in one such foray.
Mr. Taranto goes on to cite statistics indicating that 60% of Americans have beliefs which Bloomberg seems quite willing to deride. That’s bad politics, and not because he should be telling everyone what they want to hear. I’d hate for hime to simply tell people what they want to hear, not least because sometimes, what people want to hear is utter, drooling stupidity. The problem is that, much like he’s done in New York relative to trans-fats and smoking, he’s a fan of strong statements that issues of his choosing should be treated as “black and white”.
Totally aside from the fact that there’s no such thing as “creationalism“, and thus it can’t be a black and white issue (I know what he actually meant, and his slipped tongue matters not at all), it’s bad politics to go around telling people what they should believe. Doing so leads inexorably to (wait for it…) rank, frank, and virulent partisanship. It’s part of how we got to the sorry partisan state of current affairs.
And while I agree with his statement about creationism at its extremes, I don’t think it forms a good basis for either a campaign or a governing strategy. The complete separation of matters of science from matters of faith is also not a black and white issue, as examples from Taranto’s piece (for which, go read it) clearly illustrate.
So, Bloomberg’s now an Independent. Hooray for him! He’s out on the campaign trail (notwithstanding his specific claims not to be). Hooray for him! He’s speaking his mind, bluntly and forcefully, wowing crowds in Silicon Valley, in New York, and, well… I can’t think of anywhere else he’s wowed a crowd.
I’d expect that many people who’ve not already reached the state will soon come to agree with me: He’s an interesting guy, with some simultaneously excellent, business-like, and totally unworkable ideas. And would be hugely fun to watch in a campaign, right up to his first Ross Perot moment, when we’d all be able to watch his political future evaporate in a puff. And we’d all move on to the next train wreck.
This month’s dose of stupidity, widely and deeply covered everywhere (really, Google it if you don’t believe me - 17 million items found as of this writing), is the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill (a variation which will only find you 1,180,000 Google hits).
I don’t pretend to be able to add anything new to the debate that’s not been said before, but think it interesting to note here, for myself, what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s wildly fanciful about the process of this bill, as it progresses to its conclusion.
First, a couple basics that inform my thoughts on the matter:
Illegal immigration is just that - illegal, and it’s illegal for many reasons, not least of which is national security
We, as a nation, have failed lamentably in securing our borders, and the Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1986 was an honest attempt to remedy that, providing amnesty for 3 million illegal aliens
Depending on whose numbers you use, there are between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants in the US today, most from Mexico and Central America
Clearly the 1986 act failed in every meaningful way to solve the stated problem
Undaunted, our legislative overlords are in the process of rushing through a new bill, to do the same thing, only larger by a factor of 3 to 6 times in scope
Amazingly, they pretend to think that this time, it will work, when a three year old could argue that it won’t, and win convincingly
Notwithstanding all the difficulties of this newly planned amnesty, uprooting 12 to 20 million residents and throwing them out of the country is too cold-hearted for most Americans, including me, to countenance
So we’ve got a problem here, and some rational compromise is required
Added for clarification: I don’t believe illegal immigrants, particularly from Mexico, come here primarily for the public benefits
However, the currently proposed immigration bill is assuredly not the compromise we need, and isn’t in fact a compromise at all - it starts on the side of aggressive generosity, and is now being whittled and wheedled (Pelosi - no skills tests, Bingaman - cut guest visa numbers from 400,000 to 200,000, risking calls for additional concessions and giveaways elsewhere, Bush - we can’t ask illegals to pay back taxes or fines) to become an even more toothless/worthless/harmful piece of legislation, one that will have the effect of throwing our Southern border wide open, and placing a drain on the country’s resources that will be bad for all, including the illegals presently here.
A page containing the summary status on S.1438 can be found here.
The full bill can be found starting here.
President Bush Discusses Comprehensive Immigration Bill
“Immigration is a tough issue for a lot of Americans. The agreement reached today is one that will help enforce our borders, but equally importantly, it will treat people with respect. This is a bill where people who live here in our country will be treated without amnesty, but without animosity.”
President George W. Bush
May 17, 2007
Three Key Points About The Bush Administration’s Border Security And Worksite Enforcement Achievements
1. Since The President Took Office In 2001, The Administration Has More Than Doubled Funding For Border Security – From $4.6 Billion In 2001 To $10.4 Billion In 2007.
2. As A Result Of This Investment And Other Deterrence Factors, The Number Of People Apprehended For Illegally Crossing Our Southern Border Is Down By Nearly 27 Percent In 2007 From This Point In 2006.
3. Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE) Has Replaced The Old System Of Administrative Hearings And Fines With A Much Tougher Combination Of Criminal Prosecutions And Asset Forfeitures – A Much More Aggressive Approach Toward Cracking Down On Employers Who Knowingly Hire Illegal Aliens. This has resulted in a significant increase in arrests for criminal violations brought in worksite enforcement actions.
…&c, &c, &c.
All that would be grand, if it mattered at all - it doesn’t, and the reasons it doesn’t matter are precisely the same as those which guarantee the functional failure of the present proposal if it’s enacted. The number of people apprehended for violating our border is down 27%. Even assuming that this actually indicates better enforcement, it’s telling that the true numbers behind the statistic aren’t disclosed here. To the extent that the number of people who evade apprehension is any meaningful non-zero number, it proves enforcement, however much more is spent on it today, is a failure. 12-20 million existing illegals is further proof.
The increased enforcement actions touted in his third bullet point sound quite draconian, until you realize he’s not talking about enforcement actions against the myriad groups of wandering day laborers in cities like Houston and other border states. He’s talking about employer actions, because this is now and has always been all about ingratiating the Republican Party with the Hispanic community, legal and illegal. Color me unimpressed.
It’s not as though Bush hasn’t always claimed to want to fix immigration - he’s actually quite good at following through with his stated intentions (not always achieving the goals, of course, but he seldom drops an issue he claims to find important). The problem is that in particularly in immigration reform, where the electoral beneficiaries are far more likely to be his opposition, he continues to play deal-maker, and gives in at the hint of opposition, even when a rational assessment would indicate he’s being played like a rube. Bidding against oneself is never good. Doing so, as Bush is presently, against the wishes of the American people (46% against, vs. 26% for), and is clearly opposed by some of those he wants to carry water for him in Congress.
Remember that justification, above, for pushing the immigration bill through? No, not the one about simply trying to regularize a tough situation for a lot of present illegals - the other one, involving ingratiation? From the Rassmussen poll link above:
The challenge for proponents of the legislation is to convince voters that they are serious about enforcement and that the proposal will truly work. Until that can be accomplished, public opposition to immigration reform is likely to remain very high. In an era where voters overwhelmingly believe that members of Congress are more interested in their careers than the public good, that will be a difficult goal to achieve.
Groveling for future votes, in a manner opposed by present voters, seems pretty craven. And par for the course, to be honest.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), has a couple pages on his website attempting to debunk what he calls the myths surrounding the bill. He’s also got a 4 page summary of the plan, in PDF format. Both do a creditable, if not credible, job of calming fears about what the plan is, and how it will work. They even provide specific answers to some of the more inflammatory objections put forth so far, such as Hugh Hewitt’s apparent misread, in which he came to the conclusion that the bill provides ICE 24 hours to approve or deny an applicant for the “Z Visa”, conferring semi-regular status. According to the mythbusters on Graham’s site, it appears Mr. Hewitt was wrong.
Both Hewitt and Dr. Thomas Sowell, whose opinion I generally find respectable and intelligent, appear to have facts wrong in a couple of places, including their shared assertion, including Sowell’s from an article published today at National Review Online, that the “the 700-mile fence on paper that has become the two-mile fence in practice”. The White House page linked above makes specific reference to “86 miles of primary fencing” in existence today. When the goal is 700 miles, 86 doesn’t seem a lot. When the comparison is 2 versus 86, the proponent of the lower number needs to support it, or be seen overreacting.
But time will tell, and these gentlemen’s skepticism, as well as that of others, seems well warranted by other actions on the part of this bill’s supporters. Including (ahem) Lindsey Graham (R-SC), while tongue-bathing a gathering of La Raza:
It’s a 4 minute video, and aside from the mealy-mouthed thanks to McCain and Kennedy, and the repeated attempts to be seen to be as Hispanic as his audience, the money shot is in the last 10 seconds, where he says
We’re going to tell the bigots to shut up.
Not smooth at all, and not indicative of comfort in his position, by a long shot. There’s also Michael Chertoff, the Secy of DHS, who has repeatedly made unkind assertions about anyone who doesn’t think the current proposal is tough enough:
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: You know, Wolf, first, I understand there’s some people who expect anything other than capital punishment is an amnesty.
…and
I understand that some people think it’s not tough enough. Maybe they want people thrown in jail for 10 years or they want people executed.
Also not smooth, and based on his repetition, apparently it’s part of the designated talking points.
As with the hideously expensive and poorly designed Medicare Part D entitlement extensions, which Ted Kennedy called “a good down payment”, to Bush’s complete lack of embarrassment, it looks as though Bush and his team are being led down a path to destroying the remaining credibility of the Republican party, while the Democrats laugh up their sleeves.
But that’s all just politics. What about the reality?
It’ll be completely unenforceable. The presumption that 12+ million illegals will willingly pay an immediate $1,000 penalty (the provision designed to pretend this isn’t an amnesty), followed by a $4,000 fee before getting a green card, exiting the country, and getting in line for years to get back in, is interesting, if a bit laughable. Even if the bureaucracy is mustered to put those requirements into effect (hardly a guaranteed happening), the alternative, simply remaining in the underground economy, remains, and might well be the preferable alternative. We’ve shown a complete inability to effectively manage this part of the population in the US over the past decades, and there cannot be a realistic expectation that this bill will suddenly change that.
If we’re not prepared to throw out all the illegals (and we’re not, nor should we necessarily be), we’re also not prepared to deal with non-compliance to the new legislation.
I’ll leave it for others to explain the third plank of inadequacy for this proposal. There’s the politics, the enforcement, and the ruinous cost to our economy. One prediction of that last bit can be seen in the May 10, 2007 testimony before the House Committee on Small Business by Robert Rector, of the Heritage Foundation. $2.5 trillion is a big, big number.
Addendum - For a rebuttal of Rector’s numbers, see this non-bylined piece in today’s WSJ.
See also this, I don’t know what to call it, so I’ll call it a “head fake”, from Dick Morris - “Republicans should back immigration compromise“. The crux of Morris’ argument appears to be encapsulated here:
Democrats want Hispanics to vote but don’t want them to work and compete with their labor union allies for jobs.
Republicans want them to work (since the employers are mostly Republican) but don’t want them to vote.
This bill, unfortunately, allows current illegal immigrants to work immediately but defers giving them the franchise for almost a decade. It’s a bill a Republican should love.
As arguments go, this one’s neither flattering nor convincing.
Bookmark to:
Author : Michael Patton
at : 6:42am
Comments : Comments Off
Categories : Federal Politics Tags : immigration
In the interest of saving wear and tear on my keyboard, please note that virtually all links from this site to either WSJ or the Economist, two of my most-used reference sites, are subscription only.
Recent Comments