Here is what I think, we (the USA) should start a downward spiral in spending, finish the job in the Middle East (soon!) and remove our troop presence there; increase the FITW by 0.5% for those making less than $150K and 1.5% for those making over $150K; invest (Right Now!) in rebuilding our infrastructure, building a national grid, greatly increase extraction of oil from the Bakken Basin; develop green energy (solar, wind, thermal, etc) on a grand scale; STOP illegal alien migration into our country, and initiate a long-term program of deportment of illegals; and pass a constitutional amendment that redefines how one becomes an American citizen by requiring that at the time of birth a child must be born with at least one parent who is an American citizen. All of these initiatives would most surely create tens of thousands of jobs for Americans.
Our country needs the help of all of us to get the hell out of this recession, but we must hold our representatives' feet to the fire; anyone who impedes this progress should either be impeached or not reelected. In my humble opinion.
Immigration Reform-A Response--12-03-2010
My thoughts on the DREAM Act.
So, the way I read the DREAM Act (Well, I actually haven't read it) is that children under some specified age (16, 12, 6, 1) brought to the USA illegally (presumably by parents or some other relative) would be able to acquire citizenship. Does that mean the illegals who brought the children here are themselves allowed to stay here indefinitely without fear of prosecution or deportation? Forever!?
Why don't we just throw our borders wide open?!?
In my humble opinion we should initiate a broad-scale roundup of all illegals and deport them to their country of origin. Parents of minor American children (those born in the USA of illegals) have the option of taking those children back with them or leave them here to be cared for by Catholic Charities (aren't most illegals Catholic?) (the USA would reimburse Catholic Charities for the living and educational expenses of the children until they reached maturity); non-Catholics would go into a National foster care program. American children taken by deported parents back to their country of origin will be allowed to return to the USA on their own upon reaching maturity (they will have to show their passport, however).
This program of deportation of illegals would of course be highly publicized so as to encourage illegals to voluntarily return to their home country on their own. The program would, of course, be a long term endeavor and annual results of the program's efforts and statistics would be publicized.
Each fourth of July, at the ranch of G.W. Bush, the residences of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the White House, there would be a mass swearing-in of new American citizens carried live on the Fox channels (not the Fox sports channels) and C-SPAN.
The program benefits, other than reducing and eventually eliminating illegals, would dramatically reduce the number of attempts to gain illegal entry into the USA, would be to create perhaps thousands of new long-term, welling paying jobs for real American citizens.
Or, we could just do what the Nazi's did........ (I didn't really say that, did I?)
Harvey
So, the way I read the DREAM Act (Well, I actually haven't read it) is that children under some specified age (16, 12, 6, 1) brought to the USA illegally (presumably by parents or some other relative) would be able to acquire citizenship. Does that mean the illegals who brought the children here are themselves allowed to stay here indefinitely without fear of prosecution or deportation? Forever!?
Why don't we just throw our borders wide open?!?
In my humble opinion we should initiate a broad-scale roundup of all illegals and deport them to their country of origin. Parents of minor American children (those born in the USA of illegals) have the option of taking those children back with them or leave them here to be cared for by Catholic Charities (aren't most illegals Catholic?) (the USA would reimburse Catholic Charities for the living and educational expenses of the children until they reached maturity); non-Catholics would go into a National foster care program. American children taken by deported parents back to their country of origin will be allowed to return to the USA on their own upon reaching maturity (they will have to show their passport, however).
This program of deportation of illegals would of course be highly publicized so as to encourage illegals to voluntarily return to their home country on their own. The program would, of course, be a long term endeavor and annual results of the program's efforts and statistics would be publicized.
Each fourth of July, at the ranch of G.W. Bush, the residences of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the White House, there would be a mass swearing-in of new American citizens carried live on the Fox channels (not the Fox sports channels) and C-SPAN.
The program benefits, other than reducing and eventually eliminating illegals, would dramatically reduce the number of attempts to gain illegal entry into the USA, would be to create perhaps thousands of new long-term, welling paying jobs for real American citizens.
Or, we could just do what the Nazi's did........ (I didn't really say that, did I?)
Harvey
Immigration Reform
[The following is a post of an email sent to me by a friend. I have comments to it posted here.]
DREAM ACT ------DREAM ON!
(By — Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies)
(By — Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies)
DREAM On
The amnesty-for-illegals crowd has found some sympathetic poster children.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have pledged a vote as early as this week on the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), a bill that would legalize illegal aliens who arrived here before the age of 16 and who comply with certain educational or military-service requirements.
The core principle behind this amnesty proposal is that it is aimed at those who have grown up here and are, psychologically and emotionally, Americans. In the words of America’s Voice, a hard-left open-borders group, the beneficiaries of the measure are “patriotic young Americans in all but paperwork.”
There’s no doubt that this is the most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants. That is precisely why DREAM has been dangled as bait for the more general amnesty proposals described as “comprehensive immigration reform,” with amnesty advocates brandishing the situation of these young people as justification for a broader amnesty. (Though no one seems to have stopped to ask: If such a comprehensive bill would provide amnesty for all illegals, then why would we need DREAM?)
Nonetheless, now that the amnesty crowd has belatedly decided to move ahead on DREAM as a standalone measure, many in the public and Congress are open to the idea of addressing the situation of such young people. But the DREAM Act, in every one of its iterations over the years, has four fatal flaws.
1. The act is billed as legalizing those brought as infants or toddlers, and yet it covers people brought here up to age 16. The examples used by advocates are nearly always people who were brought here very young. The student-body president at Fresno State University, Pedro Ramirez — who was “coincidentally” revealed to be an illegal alien just as the DREAM Act lame-duck effort got under way — came here at age three. Harvard student Eric Balderas was brought here at age four. Yves Gomes was brought here at 14 months, Juan Gomez at two years, Marie Gonzalez at five, Dan-el Padilla at four, and so on.
So why set the age cutoff at 16? If the point is to provide amnesty to those whose identity was formed here, then you’d need a much lower age cutoff. I have a 15-year-old, and if I took him to live illegally in Mexico (and living illegally is a lot harder to do there than here), he would always remain, psychologically, an American, because his identity is already formed. The Roman Catholic Church and English common law set the age of reason at seven. That, combined with a requirement of at least ten years’ continuous residence here, seems like a much more defensible place to draw the line. Unless, of course, you’re just using those who came as young children to bootstrap a larger amnesty.
2. Next, all amnesties have at least three harmful consequences, and the DREAM Act ignores all three. The first of these is massive fraud. Perhaps one-fourth of those legalized under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act received amnesty fraudulently, including Mahmud Abouhalima, a leader of the first World Trade Center attack. The fraud in that first big amnesty program was so pervasive as to be almost comical, with people claiming work histories here that included picking watermelons from trees and digging cherries out of the ground.
And yet what does the DREAM Act say about fraud? As Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) points out in “Ten Things You Need To Know about S-3827, the DREAM Act,” the measure “prohibits using any of the information contained in the amnesty application (name, address, length of illegal presence that the alien admits to, etc.) to initiate a removal proceeding or investigate or prosecute fraud in the application process.” This is like playing a slot machine without having to put any money in — any illegal alien can apply, and if he wins, great, but if he loses, he can’t be prosecuted even if he lied through his teeth about everything. No amnesty proposal can be taken seriously unless applicants are made to understand, right up front, that any lies, no matter how trivial, will result in arrest and imprisonment.
3. Another problem with DREAM, which all amnesties share, is that it will attract new illegal immigration. Prospective illegal immigrants, considering their options, are more likely to opt to come if they see that their predecessors eventually hit the jackpot. In 1986, we had an estimated 5 million illegals, 3 million of whom were legalized. We now have more than twice as many as before the last amnesty, and they’ve been promised repeatedly that if they hold out a little longer they’ll be able to stay legally. Any new amnesty, even if only for those brought here as children, will attract further illegal immigration.
There’s really no way to prevent this, but to minimize it, you need stringent enforcement measures. This was the logic of the 1986 law and the recent “comprehensive immigration reform” proposals. The critique of such “grand bargains” has been that the illegals get their amnesty but the promised enforcement never materializes — and that critique remains valid. But if the sponsors of DREAM were serious about addressing the plight of people brought here as infants and toddlers, they would include muscular enforcement measures as proof of their bona fides. These would include mandatory use of E-Verify for all new hires, explicit authorization of state and local governments to enforce civil immigration law, and full implementation of an exit-tracking system for all foreign visitors, for starters. And the legal status of all the amnesty beneficiaries would remain provisional until the enforcement measures were up and running and passed judicial muster. Even these might not be sufficient to turn back a new wave of illegal immigration sparked by the amnesty, but the lack of such measures speaks volumes about the real intentions of the DREAM Act’s sponsors.
4. Finally, all amnesties reward illegal immigrants — in this case, both those brought here as children and the adults who subjected them to this limbo. Any serious proposal to legalize young people brought here as infants or toddlers would need to prevent the possibility that their parents and other adults responsible for bringing them here illegally would ever receive any benefit from the amnesty, namely, future sponsorship as legal immigrants. This could be done in two ways: Either the amnesty recipients would not be put on a “path to citizenship” at all, but instead be given a time-limited work visa, indefinitely renewable so long as they stay out of trouble. This would mean they could not petition for any relatives to immigrate in the future. Alternatively, the amnesty beneficiaries could receive green cards and eventual citizenship, but we would abolish all the legal-immigration categories for family members other than spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens. Either way, the adults who knew what they were doing would never be rewarded.
A DREAM Act 2.0 that addressed these problems — that prosecuted fraud, implemented enforcement, prevented downstream legal immigration, and focused much more narrowly on those who came very young — would possibly be something that even I, were I a congressman, might be able to vote for. But the lack of these elements is clear proof that the amnesty crowd isn’t interested in fixing the specific problem of a sympathetic but small group of people; rather, these young people are simply poster children who have been used for years to try to justify a general amnesty for all illegal aliens. And when the DREAM Act fails, as it will, Pedro Ramirez and his fellows will need to ask the pro-amnesty politicians and lobbying groups why they were sacrificed on the altar of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Veteran's Day Thought and Comments
My comment was:
Robin, that is very nice. I am sure that most Vets who are still with
It has been my honor to have visited the WWII, Korean war, Vietnam war, and FDR Memorials in our Nation's Capitol. Those visits always imbued within me a deep pride in my country and seriously placed honor for those who gave the ultimate gift for Freedom.
Thanks again for the beautiful comment.
Supply-Side Economics
Supply-Side Economics 101 (SSE) says, basically, lower taxes stimulates economic growth. This may be all well and good, philosphically, but it is a folly practicality. Here's why: Less taxes means reduced government income; it has been shown that whatever growth is attained doesn't make up for the loss in revenue until perhaps in the long term--20 years or longer. This deficit certainly wouldn't allow for balancing a budget which would require a "doubling down" of deficit spending. What would happen--what has happned EVERY time SSE has been employed--is payroll taxes would shoot up to ameliorate the deficit in government income, AND the reduction in spending (if any) never balances out the budget deficit. So, historically, implemeting SSE ends up as a depreciatory fiscal functionalty.
As can be seen from Reagan's SSE, Reaganonmics, and GWB's gigantic tax reduction acts, the national debt increased more than two-fold. My take: America will never get back on top unless we start to pay our debts "Pay-as-you-go," incrementally reduce spending, pay down the national debt, and completely overhaul our infrastructure. Doing this will require raising taxes. We have got to "suck it up" and live, as a country, more frugally.
As can be seen from Reagan's SSE, Reaganonmics, and GWB's gigantic tax reduction acts, the national debt increased more than two-fold. My take: America will never get back on top unless we start to pay our debts "Pay-as-you-go," incrementally reduce spending, pay down the national debt, and completely overhaul our infrastructure. Doing this will require raising taxes. We have got to "suck it up" and live, as a country, more frugally.
Balancing the Budget
Balancing the budget (within next 10 years) is, I believe, a pipe dream--promulgated by Rs with their heads in the clouds. GWB didn't do it during his regime and it's completely unreasonable to think ANYONE could do it considering the state of our economy, tremendous deficit in import-export balance of payments, and the continued movement of manufacturers extra-CONUS. Balancing the budget is certainly a desired goal, be you an R or a D.
Let's get America back on top first.
Let's get America back on top first.
Reality in Phoenix, Arizona
The following is an email I sent out today, 22 Sep 10. [The photo referenced herein will not open in this blog. Sorry. It was a photo of people desecrating our national emblem by painting on the flag and dumping all sort of vile trash and garbage on it.]
"I really did have to send this on. Yeah, I know burning our Flag is protected by the Constitution (yeah, free speech--go figure!). But then, to publicly lay out the Flag and trash it, spitting on it, throwing garbage on it, goes a little too far--just too, too, desecrating.
I didn't serve our country for 30 years in the Air Force--honoring our national symbol--standing at attention and holding a salute as the Flag passed by--feeling that tingle up my spine while standing with my hand over my heart while listening to or participating in the singing The Star-Spangled Banner--being so proud to be an American, always, after having been in and experienced living in other countries--to not be incensed when anyone, particularly illegals, desecrate our Flag. I suppose it was good this happened in Phoenix instead of St. Peters. I hope you get mad as hell when you review the forwarded email!
I wonder when our police are going to start protecting, defending, our National Emblems? Hey, just turn away--close your eyes--when some patriotic American or a veteran puts down those trying to desecrate Our Flag. ("Gee, I didn't see noth'n")
I have one suggestion for anyone considering defacing or burning Our Flag.....wrap yourself in it before striking the match.
"I really did have to send this on. Yeah, I know burning our Flag is protected by the Constitution (yeah, free speech--go figure!). But then, to publicly lay out the Flag and trash it, spitting on it, throwing garbage on it, goes a little too far--just too, too, desecrating.
I didn't serve our country for 30 years in the Air Force--honoring our national symbol--standing at attention and holding a salute as the Flag passed by--feeling that tingle up my spine while standing with my hand over my heart while listening to or participating in the singing The Star-Spangled Banner--being so proud to be an American, always, after having been in and experienced living in other countries--to not be incensed when anyone, particularly illegals, desecrate our Flag. I suppose it was good this happened in Phoenix instead of St. Peters. I hope you get mad as hell when you review the forwarded email!
I wonder when our police are going to start protecting, defending, our National Emblems? Hey, just turn away--close your eyes--when some patriotic American or a veteran puts down those trying to desecrate Our Flag. ("Gee, I didn't see noth'n")
I have one suggestion for anyone considering defacing or burning Our Flag.....wrap yourself in it before striking the match.
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