Unemployment, Illegal Immigration, Poverty and You

Continuing my thoughts on the state of our nation, over the past 50 years we have destroyed our manufacturing sector, instead relying upon imports. In one respect, Americans do not seem to understand that the WWII generation created and supported the creation of the United Nations. After WWI & II, they wanted something better to keep the world from falling apart. Given that competition between USSR & the US, the opportunity for global conflagration was high. So proxy wars, UN resolutions, and exhaustive small stupid wars came into being.

In the global expansion of commerce, the ruling class of baby boomers came into being. Each claiming knowledge of how to help those towards the bottom. Before the explosion of education, the working class could aspire to a middle class life. We did move into a technological world, more formal education was needed, but old attitudes die hard.

So, free trade agreements became the rage, jobs went south to Mexico, made a right turn and landed in Asia. Those who made it in education are the beneficiaries, those who depended upon working w/o education were in a vulnerable position. Then came illegal immigration.

Now, the PC lefties would correct me in saying that they are, "undocumented workers". They would be correct in the latter, but as working for companies requires documents, they have documents, just not valid ones. So using the left's phrase, they are, "illegally documented workers", or, "illegal workers" for short.

Working folks in Iowa won't work for $10.00/hr in a meat packing plant, but would do so for $15.00/hr. However, the cheaper labor makes that unlikely. And to my personal knowledge, our government has seen fit to reissue visas to those who previously overstayed their visas for 5-6 years and worked. Our visa policy is favorable to foreigners who own property in their native land.

So now to unemployment. While illegal immigration has slowed, it has not stopped. Others remain, still working. To their credit, working people at in contact with immigrants in their jobs, neighborhoods, and daily routines. There is not hatred nor jealousy towards them on a grand scale. The social compact has been observed: they have been helped during their crisis. But to date, it has stopped.

So what will the future bring? People just holding on to their lives, cutting back, downsizing, minimizing, and cutting costs, spending whatever they get on housing, food and necessities? Are they living the high life? And now with the extensions cut off, the welfare safety net is their next alternative.

They are loosely organized through service organizations. As for me, I'm searching the horizon for the rising demagogues, charismatics, and pretenders to the throne who will organize the 10%+ rabble into a rise to power, much like Hitler did with his brown shirts.

Unemployment and the State of the Nation

Our current economic conditions are an accumulation of 30 years of foolish monetary policy. I remember getting a primer on it while a banker in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Its premise is that surpluses are built in good times to assist the economy in bad times. But politicians being what they are, having a pot o gold is too much to resist. Only this time, it went out as tax cuts instead of spending.

Kool Aid drinkers on both sides point to one another. A truth about regaining sanity is to look at your actions and be responsible only for what you can control, and don't take someone else's inventory. Unfortunately, that is exactly what they do.

So now debates rage on immigration, unemployment federal extensions, and START treaty. And the extremes hold dearly to their positions. And the problems go on.

Take federal unemployment compensation. During my stay on the' "dole", it was difficult to determine from the information provided what could be done. For instance, if one works one week and reports it, does it interfere with next week's payment?

I received Social Security Disability in the mid 80's. Rep Andy Jacob, and a moderate republican senator sponsored and passed a bill that allowed SS disability recipients to go back the work yet have the safety net under them if chronic conditions recurred within specified time periods. Previously, they would start all over with a six month waiting period.

I'm a fan of William F Buckley whose main thesis was Government should not do what the private sector can do. It does what is needed. The private sector is not providing jobs. Repubs think giving them more money in the form of tax breaks and other incentives would work. However, your basic transnational company isn't patriotic, has been focused not on making money, but maximizing profits. A brief review of literature over the firms who received TARP funds will substantiate this.

In the 1930's, starting in Jackson County Missouri, Harry Truman, as a county judge aka commissioner, parked the machinery and put men to work on the roads. It is thought that it was the model for WPA projects. However, we do not see this occurring with the big companies, but with small businesses, those whose owners are more connected to people, extending help wherever possible and within their resources.

I do believe that we are entering a very dangerous time in our history. We have submitted ourselves to belief systems such as multiculturalism, strident feminism, rigid conservatism, etc that it is a struggle for the middle to hold against the ends. Yet this is necessary for the survival of our constitutional republic.

And I haven't even addressed the issue of sexual immorality.

Airport Profiling, Part 1, The Case for It.

I did a stint in the late 70's at Baer Field as airport security. I had a lttle training, as basically assisted the screeners there with any obnoxious clients. The procedure was simple: if anyone made jokes about hijackings, I was to inform them that it was not permissible to joke about such things and if they persisted, I was to call on the airport police to take over the interaction. In high school, two classmates spent a weekend in jail because one joked to the other that they ought to hijack the plane and were overheard by a sky marshall. They were given accomdations in the best Philadelphia jail (remember Mayor Frank Rizzo and burning up of the tenements?) and were the guests of the Federal District Court on Monday morning.

The techniques were simple and effective. Sky Marshalls were used extensively and effectively. The unannounced side vacations to the Havana airport where one could view Cuban soldiers if one had a window seat ceased.

Flash forward to today. An army of officious looking personnel with no real authority and the task of screening a multitude of passengers. Airports and air travel has grown extensively since the 70's, so too has security. And so has the procedures. Certainly so have the procedures.

We are faced with increased scale and anonymity in today's society. As ones credit score has replaced the five C's of credit and a subject examination of a borrower (debt to income ratio, job security, living stability, etc), so too are the airport procedures given over to treating everyone as one.

The huge elephant in the room is that there is a way to narrow down the lists of suspects: profiling.

Now if you think I'm suggesting racial profiling, think again. When we focused on everyone from Arab Muslim countries, resentment was created. We treated young men and women from Omen and Tunisia, two progressive Arabic countries (think of the progressivism of the turn of the century, not the bastardized edition that exists today). And from the Asiatic countries as well.

Profiling as I know it has been developed by the FBI (and poorly represented on the crime drama, "Criminal Minds") to develop a system similar to the DSM used by psychiatry, but for serial and mass murders. Through thousands of interviews of these types of folk, they have been very successful at finding them. Retired FBI profiler, John Douglas, www.mindhunter.com, has written several good books such as, "The Mind Hunter, Anatomy of a Motive, and The Cases that Haunt Us"

As I recollect, this profiling is based upon several factors.

Extensive and Intensive interviewing: this FBI unit at Quantico has spent thousands of hours since the 60's compiling data through interviews of mass murders and serial killers. Richard Speck was the first.

Modus Operandi changes. As serial murders continue, they improve, so their MO changes. This has been the biggest drawback in law enforcement when they don't see that same thing each time, then they change their tactics.

Develop a classification system. It allows handy generalizations.

Have a contingent of specially trained agents with the gift of profiling. No matter how extensive the classification system, an agent must have a special gift of profiling. They seem to be born with it. It cannot be given, but can be developed.

So, on to the airport.

I've been struck at the warnings given beforehand of the 9-11 hijackers, the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. Information that was obscured in various govt agencies that didn't communicate with each other, pieces hidden in various parts of the Fed govt, and warnings given by people (the father of the underwear bomber, the Actor James Woods who made 4 of the 9-11 hijackers a month before on the Boston-Los Angeles flight). I had a coworker whose family worked for the CIA (he worked in Air America in the 70's) who laid out the cell structure on Al Qaeda in the US for me in the late 90's. Federal law enforcement knew of Hezbollah's money-raising in the US through mid-level rackets (selling North Carolina cigarettes in Detroit for example)and the rules allowed knives under 4 inches and box cutters on board. The information was there, just not properly collated.

So, after 9-11, the Feds (Republicans in charge, remember?) dismantled a privately run system, ruining a man's living (read, "Unsafe at Any Altitude") simply on the premise that , "we have to do something to sooth the fears of the public". So we had a grossly ineffective new, inexperienced system that failed security tests 50% of the times vs the former system failure rate of 10%.

What kept us safe after 9-11? Inability to improve the MO. To become competent at a task, one must practice, practice, practice. The 9-11 hijackers made dry runs before the final one. As entry systems improved (not US, but European), and we clobbered Al Qaeda initially, they've had to rely on less trained and ineffective bombers. Let's face it, both the shoe and underwear bombers were highly incompetent. The terrorists can change the MO, but they can't improve upon it due to their agents cannot do dry runs.

Changing the rules about what can be carried on? btw...I can carry on a pair of metal scissors with less than 4 inch blades or knitting needles. And as prisoners have taught us, homemade weapons can be fashioned out of plastic dinnerware. Maybe, it increases safety. It would have prevented box cutters from being used. However, I have been carrying in my laptop case a letter opener with just about 4 inch blades that folds back into itself. Extended with the handle it measures 7 inches. I carry it on the street for personal protection.

Greater awareness aboard? More security measures on the jet? Yes.

Terrorist Watch List? It's like the Hotel California, you can be checked on to it anytime, but you can never leave. I have a host of bad accounts that believe I can put them on it, so they keep in touch and keep payments up to date. It's not a very good measure as they can put anyone on it, and usually do.

Airport security. Airports since the 70's have been designed for security. They had plain clothes and uniformed officers, hidden rooms and are trained to sweep a suspicious person from the crowd in the terminal or concourses into a side room without most noticing. This occurred in Houston in 1993 when approaching the customs checkpoint to two men with metal cases.

Warning Levels...give me a break.

Other stuff? Count on the passengers not to take any threat lying down. After all, if I'm going down, I'm going to do my best to make sure to keep myself busy doing all that I can do to make the perps last descent hellish.

Carry on a container of pig grease? Just a thought.

TSA, Airline Security & Me.

Is anyone else out there concerned that TSA and terrorism security is reactive rather than proactive? That we have procedures implemented due to what happened in the past?

I've had fellow travelers tell me how safe they feel due to immigration and screening procedures (once in Atlanta when going through screening as I was distracting the new screener being trained as I had 3 bottles of Flor de Cana Rum in my carryon because I forgot to transfer it to my checked luggage It worked!!!) They have improved their procedures, but I lost a perfectly good Swiss Army knife because Midway did not have a mailing program while Charlotte airport did! (I discovered my error as I sat transfering my pocket items to my carryon. As I was sitting on the ledge of a flower bed, I briefly considered burying the knife in the soil, but thought better of it because I figured I would be observed or on camera and would pay too high a price for it.)

So much for my experiences. There is a lack of uniformity in procedures such as mailing, items allowed, etc) between airports. There is the incorrect sense that TSA are law enforcement personnel (they have no arrest powers). And they know that they are not doing everything that they need to do such as profiling. More on profiling in my next post.

So the time and money spent on scanners and training. Effective? Perhaps, if the images are detailed. But I've already heard that it would not have detected the Detroit underwear bombers bomb. And as I have learned from my experiences in remote image sensoring, humans are very creative at beating imaging. I do it all day long in my business.

Another post on the pluses, minuses of airport security techniques.

Time to get to work

Greetings blogworld. I've not done much, simply because I'm busy, what with MySpace, facebook, twitter, texting, and all, there are not enough hours in the day to get it all done. And I have to earn a living as well.

The Coming End of the Great Nation-State

Over the past several years, I have sent links to articles by Georgianne Geyer. She is a columnist that I have admired and respected throughout the years. When I returned from a year of study in Costa Rica in 1995, I began to see my country in a different light. I began to understand that it was still continuing on a dangerous course, and that it needed to be changed as soon as possible. Hence I began my sortee into public education.

12 years later, embattled and embittered, a recovering teacher am I. I thought we would progress. Little did I understand how much I had underestimated my generations capacity for stupidity, ignorance, and smugness. As we go marching towards chaos, anarchy, and tribalism, as the warning signs that inhabit for former countries of Lebanon, Yugoslavia, and Sierra Leone, we face the most critical crisis of our times. The destruction of the nation-state.

We have elected two extremists as president. The 60's tune out crowd and wannabes don't seem to have the intestinal fortitude to handle the struggle that is necessary. I have seen improvement, then watched it reverse as the two extremes began a bloody death struggle starting with BC's impeachment followed by the 2000 election. The phony post 9-11 unity was quickly unraveled, and here we are. Where will we go? What are we to do?

I wish I had the answer. I'm searching though. I find it important to search.

Reducing Crime in Indianapolis

Ok here goes...a summary of some of the stuff necessary for a vibrant, functioning metropolis...
Schools: acknowledge that geographical, sociological and psychological changes has lead to a huge change in people, particularly youth. Any vet teacher worth their salt will tell you this. So we need school leadership that understands and acknowledges this, implements discipline and educational strategies that address this truth, and then integrates its work with that of law enforcement and the communities.
Communities: the neighborhood association is the local government in Indy, and has been since Unigov. To work effectively, they need leadership that takes the community interests into account, works with surrounding communities to push out the gumbahs, and to strengthen the sense of community so vital to Indy...Law enforcement gains the trust of individuals and communities who would come forward to rat out the miscreants and thugs. Law enforcement can act only after the fact, can do some proactive work, but depends upon the support of the community to effectively do its job.

Back in the Saddle Again

Well, it has been awhile, hasn't it? Not that I ever got off to a good start. But now I am back. And posting. Later,dude.

Reformed Evangelic Druid

Immigration Shananigans

No where more than the debate on immigration is the inadequacies of our education system more apparent. I read with interest a post by RiShawn Riddle in the Expresso blog in the Indianapolis Star, http://blogs.indystar.com/expresso/

RiShawn is well meaning, and has many good points. But in his argument for why illegal immigrants breaking of American law is equivalent to civil rights disobedience of the 60's, his indoctrination into multiculturalism, political correctness, and right, "left-wing" thinking is, well, interesting to decode.

May 03, 2006
Is illegal immigration really a crime?
Posted by RiShawn Biddle

A line echoed in the debate over illegal immigration by some, including Expresso reader and commenter Ryan Cooper, is that while undocumented workers deserve sympathy, their violation of America's laws by residing here is also not tolerable. After all, argues Ryan: "I'd rather have a society that benefits from respect of the law than one that benefits from corruption."

Certainly by respecting the rule of law, everyone guarantees that each of our rights and privileges will be respected by others. More importantly, the nation survives intact. At the same time, one wonders how does a nation benefit from respecting laws that are also immoral and unworkable? More importantly, how does one eliminate such laws without bringing attention to them -- and violating them in the process?

Think about it. Numerous movements to reform American politics and society, from the abolition of slavery to the Civil Rights movement to end Crow segregation during the 1950s and 1960s, couldn't have been achieved without violating the laws that sustained them. Rosa Parks' own stand against Jim Crow laws is considered admirable today, but she was also violating the laws of that time. Same for anyone sitting at a Whites-only lunch counter or using a Whites-only restroom in protest of segregation. Nat Turner is regareded as a martyr in the eyes of those who review the fight to end slavery that led to the Civil, yet his violent efforts were considered criminal in their time. And don't forget our Founding Fathers, who stood up for liberty -- and violated British law -- through acts such as the Boston Tea Party and the 1776 secession from the United Kingdon.

This reality isn't limited to American history alone. Nelson Mandela and others were imprisoned for violating the laws that kept South Africa under apartheid while a generation of Czech intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel endured prison for violating rules that perpetuated Communism in the former Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile the Cubans dissidents who battle against Fidel Castro's tyranny are also felons and worse in the eyes of the government under which they currently or once lived.

Good old fashioned nostalgia, which paints a false image of history as it never was, has a way of concealing that each person's heroic quest is another's felony. So does the reality that nothing has an inherent existence or naturally-endowed virtue: As with the turn-of-the-20th century British army who thought the clapping of Tibetans was a welcoming when the latter were actually doing so to ward them off as evil spirits, the average American arguing the "law is the law" position have a difficult time seeing illegal immigration as anything other than disrespect for the law.

For those of that mindset, consider the argument of the undocumented worker advocating for the right to become a taxpaying American citizen: Because he doesn't likely have relatives already living here as American citizens, doesn't possess a rare skill or have sponsorship from an employer in need of hard-to-find talents, American immigration laws block him from coming here and becoming a legal contributor to the nation's economy. Even if he met any of those requirements, depending on the type of quota involved, it may take him two decades before even getting permanent resident status, the first step to citizenship.

In what kind of condition in which he is residing back in his home country? The Mexican migrant has few job prospects and has access to only $62,000 in per-capita capital according to the World Bank and just a shade under $2,000 for the Ethiopian (compared to the $513,000 in per-capita capital for the average American). For the Iranian engineer, it's a life under tyranny. Either way, their lives aren't rosy and their futures aren't looking too bright.

So making the torturous trip to these shores with its comparatively boundless opportunities for a better life isn't such a bad idea. To be branded a criminal for doing what humans have done naturally for centuries -- migrate to places that can better sustain them -- suddenly seems a little ridiculous. Given that they're actually contributing to the improvement of this nation as both taxpayers and as residents, being rendered among those who actually take the life, liberty and property of others is downright unfair.

So are the undocumented and those overstaying their visas really violating American laws? More likely, American immigration laws, especially given their bigoted origins, are violating morality.

My first observation in reading RiShawn's post, it is well-written. It is logical. And it leaves out so much truth.

Let's do a little analysis and read the codes. I interpret the bold statement above as what RiShawn says it is: our immigration laws are immoral. He further argues that they are immoral because it takes too long to become a citizen, and people live in horrible conditions in their native lands because they do not have as much access to per-capita capital (you have to really work to figure out what this means, because RiShawn has outdone himself. This is the very first time I have ever read this economic measurement. I think it means that if you have 4 neighbors with $500,000 each and you have $1000, then you have access to over $400,000 per capita capital. No wait, oh never mind, I'll look it up!) Finally, Shawn gets to the heart of the matter, and states that the immigration laws have bigoted origins, therefore they are immoral.

The last statement perhaps reflects the indoctrination of RiShawn's education. It is part of a leftist mantra. No need to actually investigate, weigh the arguments, read those who have done historical research, or to address the contradictions in the matter. It's bigoted in the past, ergo, all laws henceforward are bigoted too.

The first mistake with the truth that RiShawn makes is that today's immigration laws have bigoted origins. Let me think, wasn't there an anmesty in 1986 for illegal immigrants. Is that the bigoted origins that he is alluding to?

Let's look further. An easy source is Wikipedia.



# The Immigration and Nationality Act (or McCarran-Walter Act) of 1952 somewhat liberalized immigration from Asia, but increased the power of the government to deport illegal immigrants suspected of Communist sympathies.
# The Immigration Act of 1965 discontinued quotas based on national origin, while preference given to those who have U.S. relatives. For the first time Mexican immigration was restricted.
# The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 granted amnesty to illegal immigrants who had been in the United States before 1982 but made it a crime to hire an illegal immigrant.
# The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 made drastic changes to asylum law, immigration detention, criminal-based immigration, and many forms of immigration relief.
# The Real ID Act of 2005 created more restrictions on political asylum, severely curtailed habeas corpus relief for immigrants, increased immigration enforcement mechanisms, altered judicial review, and imposed federal restrictions on the issuance of state driver's licenses to immigrants and others.

Now Shawn does a great job of painting an equivalent picture of the illegal immigrant to Rosa Parks. They are here to assert their civil rights. As citizens? Well no, because they aren't citizens because it takes so dern long and is hard to become one in the US. So we sneak in, work undercover, have a separate standard of justice in some parts (you try showing a cop six sets of fake ID and see where you land. If you are illegal and living in Denver, you get a warning and drive off. One did that several times and then executed a police officer named Donnie Young.

Shawn has numerous other inaccuracies in his argument. First,