Issue 709 False Freedom Advocate October 28, 2015

A false freedom advocate is a person(s) who preach about giving and preserving people's freedoms, while at the same time taking them away when it suits their purposes.  Let us discuss.

False Freedom Advocate:  I have met and heard from a number of people who claimed to be lovers of freedom.  They have labeled themselves as liberals, conservatives, democrats and republicans.  All, however were hypocrites.  For example, I was discussing zoning laws with two real estate sellers at the Manhattan Institute. They complained about a man in Texas who built his house out of cans and bottles of beer, thus lowering the property values in the area including the ones that these real estate people wanted to sell.  As such, they wanted to use eminent domain to have the government seize the house and kick the man and his beer house off the property.  I disagreed for it was the man's property and thus his right to live on that property as he chose.  Their reaction was a look filled with disgust, and walked away.  Meanwhile, the event I was at was an event to hear conservative ideas as the Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank.  So how can you let two people in who go counter to conservative values like that?  My answer came later when a guest speaker from the Security and Exchange commission was talking about his time working for the federal government.  He described how the commission punished a business who decided to stop producing napalm (an incendiary weapon used in war) during the Vietnam War.  The company chose to stop making it for reasons I do not know, and it was there choice, but the government did not like that.  The crowd with me listening to this were not aghast at the punishment, but to the fact that a business could be unpatriotic to stop making a weapon of war that also messed with the economy a little.  That is when I knew that self-interest and patriotic idealism ran that think tank.  Thus why they are a false freedom advocate.

Then there are those who claim to be liberal.  We heard it all before with them wanting to protect us and stop poverty.  They want to provide universal medicine. But do any of their policies actually work?  No.  If they truly wanted to help the poor they would have embraced true economic freedom via the elimination of trade boundaries between States, and the lowering of taxes or making taxes fair by not punishing those who make a little more.  They would use economics to spur businesses to grow which increases jobs rather than dependency.  Sure, not all of them are being a false freedom advocate as they really believe in what they are saying, but if you do not embrace economic freedom, then how do you expect me to have true social freedom?  Ah, that's right, it is not true social freedom they preach.  If you violate their rules such as smoking, or you are pro-life, you are shut down.  Isolated by idealists who value the collective over the individual.  Both sides know that poverty will always exist, and that progressive income taxes only incentives the people to make less so that they are not taxed more.  All that is ignored for their version of the greater good.  Their idealism.

Conclusion:  The world is full of advocates who think they know what is right.  They can all claim that they want to help, and that they only want to maximize your freedom.  However, save the obviously wrongful acts like Murder, assault, rape, and theft, should there be any laws? Do we need all that government who can take our rights away when it suits them?  Do we need people in government that seek to help but only make more laws that restrict our freedoms?  The answer is no.  Government was never meant to be used as a tool to remove people from their homes, to punish them for their successes.  It was meant to be applied to sponsor trade, and protect us from invasion.  It protects us from the obviously wrongful acts and acts as a neutral arbitrator in the form of a court of law.  It is meant to do so few jobs, yet people's selfishness made it grandiose.  We made it big and shoved freedom down the toilet.  Sorry, but if you think government should do something for you, then you may be a hypocrite.  A false freedom advocate.

Issue 708 Trump Immigration plan: part 6 October 27, 2015

Finally the last one.  I can finally stop talking about Donald Trump for a while.  So let me hurry up and critique his plan.

Refugee program for American Children:  Trump wants to increase the standards of admission of refugees and asylum seekers.  He sees the system as abused and thus wants to fix it, while at the same time saving money because let's face it, refugees and asylum seekers bypass the normal channels to come into the country and they may be ill equipped to fend for themselves.  The saved money would be used to place American kids in safer homes and communities while also improving the safety of high crime neighborhoods.  Now I am in favor of what he is trying to do with this, but their of course is a problem.  Crime in a neighborhood is in part a cultural as well as an economic problem that is compounded by issues due to the drug war.  So unless he intends to do something about the drug war and other matters the improving of high crime neighborhoods is pointless.  Also, both the adoption and placement of kids, along with tending to local communities is not a Federal issue despite how nice it may look on paper.  Reason being is that adoption and such are almost exclusively State issues.  So I fail to see how well this will work, and it comes off as a wishy washy give me your vote’s gimmick.  But the Stricter standards for asylum and refugees works.

Immigration moderation:  Trump wants a pause to occur. Before any new green cards are issued to foreign workers to work in the United States, he would have the businesses of America hire from unemployed U.S. citizens, and legal residents so as to increase American employment.  Basically, no foreign workers will be allowed in for a set period of time so as to force businesses to choose from workers here in the United States.  This is how I am hoping it would occur.  The reason being is that the only alternative would be to force businesses by law to hire U.S. citizens and approved foreign nationals allowed to live in the United States.  Basically, if it is the latter, then we are evoking fascistic principles and potentially racial, ethnic and nationalist racism at that.

Conclusion:  Ok, so if you take these final parts of Trump's plan with the others I have already talked about, you get some good ideas, like raising the minimum wage of approved foreign workers so that they do not compete with lower skilled U.S. workers, and the refugee/asylum standards increase.  However, I see a lot of fluff and of course the potential unconstitutional consequences of altering the 14th Amendment, and the potential part of forcing U.S. businesses to hire people via law as opposed to the freedom of contract protected in the U.S. Constitution.  I thus cannot endorse Trump, not that I particularly think he is the right man for the job (so I am a little biased), as I prefer a different candidate who will not violate the Constitution.

Issue 707 Trump Immigration plan: Part 5 October 26, 2015

Ok, let us continue looking at Donald Trump's immigration plan.  This time dealing with people legally coming into the country.

End J-1 Visas:  Trump wants to end this particular type of visa that caters to foreign youth looking for a job.  Basically, no more job help for younger immigrants.  His reasoning is that this visa can be replaced with a resume bank which will hold the resumes of inner city youth (those affected most by poverty).  As such, these American youths would be able to be looked at to be potentially hired over a foreign national.  Though this does not stop illegals and other migrant youth already in the country from being hired.  Also, even if this does work, what happens to these foreign youth who are now jobless?  How are they to make a living?  If these youth are included in the resume bank I can understand, but if they are not then we doom these young teens and young adults to poverty.

Increase wages of H-1B's:  H-1B's is another type of visa geared toward foreign nationals being hired by American businesses.  These visas come with a minimum wage that makes them desirable to businesses who wish to fill entry level and higher jobs.  The idea to raise the minimum wage for these individuals to a level high enough that they are no longer considered to be hired by businesses for low skilled jobs.  As such, entry level jobs will be hopefully filled by American citizens looking for entry level positions and into low skilled jobs.  Things will not change for these visas for higher end jobs however which I think is intentional.  Trump and those like him (I believe) want skilled labor and highly intelligent immigrants to come and live in the country.  As such, keeping the wage high to attract these individuals and potentially make them citizens later is possibly what they are aiming for.

Hire Americans first:  Trump's numbers say that there are 92 million Americans out of work.  Our population is 300 million.  So almost a 1/3 of Americans out of work seems sketchy, but he wants to make it that businesses hire from American citizens who are unemployed first and foremost.  What Trumps definition of unemployed is debatable, but I understand where he is coming from.  But how?  How will he accomplish this?  Sure the ideas he puts forth will help, but all come at cost, or are not ideal as they potentially can cause legal migrants to turn to criminality just to survive, and thus we just end up deporting more people as per Trumps ideas for immigration reform.

End Welfare Abuse:  Immigrants coming into the United States will apparently be forced to certify that they can afford their own housing, healthcare and other basic needs.  This is Trumps answer to all of my criticisms so far.  Basically, if you cannot afford to live here, then you will not be allowed to come into the United States in the first place. While it makes sense, the standards will be set by national averages and thus people that could move here and be citizens (or just live here) may be unable to enter because the bar is set too high (there are places in America where it is really cheap to live and below the national average).  As such, I find this idea good in one respect, but it is geared toward bringing in the richest immigrants into the United States, the intellectuals and so on.  But our country is more than just a bunch a rich smart people.  If this was set up instead to find the most affordable towns for immigrants to live in where they will thrive, then I would agree.  But this is not that.  It is set up for elites to enter the country, not the people who dream or make up the backbone of the country.

Conclusion:  Trump annoys me due to these idealist plans that favor the rich.  Do not get me wrong, his ideas will work, but there will be negative consequences that may even reduce legal immigration to a standstill.  I think the H-1B visa idea is the best, and the national resume bank can be expanded to include all the unemployed to make that better.  But beyond other improvements mentioned already, I think Trumps ideas here just don't stack up well enough to solve our immigration woes.

Issue 706 Trump immigration plan: part 4 October 23, 2015

Ok, today we are going to look at probably the most powerful and tough part of the Trump plan on immigration.  It is the issue of birthright citizenship. Let us critique.

Ending Birthright citizenship:  Trump does not want to give automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants if they were born in the United States.  He basically said that they go home with their parents no matter what, rather than have them get United States benefits with the newborns being used as tools to allow the parents to stay in the United States.  It should be noted that the United States is one of a select few countries in the world that have any version of birthright citizenship.  So should we agree that the kids get deported with the parents?  

Well it is not that simple.  The 14th amendment says that:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside"

As such, many would interpret that as anyone simply born here can and will be a citizen.  But the amendment was put forth for former black slaves who were originally considered property.  It made sure that their children would be considered citizens.  It also insures that legal immigrants and their children and children adopted from overseas will be considered citizens too.  It really was never meant to be applied to people just visiting or here illegally.  However, court rulings and legal policy and law have applied it to them anyway.  As to whether this is good or bad, I do not really care.  I personally think that our immigration system should be set up to adjust for this interpretation, but I am a voice in the peanut gallery.  But Trump wants to subvert the constitution.  He will either ignore this interpretation, or try to force a vote to change the constitution which is nearly impossible based on the process (a very good thing).  However, we do not want the amendment changed as that could lead to a bad alteration which can cause issues with future immigrants where actual citizens can be deported like with the communist sympathizers who were kicked out of the United States in a flagrant disregard for the U.S. constitution back during the cold war.  As such, we should invest time, effort and money to do battle in court to settle the issue in the right way. A battle that will end up in the Supreme Court to hopefully settle the issue once and for all.

Conclusion:  It is a very bad idea to try to alter the constitution without some clear wording and that need not be re-interpreted by some judge in a courtroom.  Also, I do not trust congress to amend the constitution on just this one issue alone.  I want the court battle that will really settle the issue in the right way.  You cannot take the easy way out for we already discriminated against every immigrant minority in the country at one time or another, and we also discriminated against religions, ideology and race.  Adjusting the constitution in any way may give an open door, through the alterations wording, to racists and other people to kick out undesirables that they believe are harmful.  Obviously that is a dangerous proposition, and Trump saying he will willingly subvert the constitution (at least how I heard it) also is dangerous for the constitution then becomes meaningless leading to mass deportations anyway.  So I cannot support Trump on any part of his plan for the dangerous that arise from it.

Issue 705 Trump Immigration Plan: Part 3 October 22, 2015

Trump is not the most likable guy, but whoever is advising him is giving him some good ideas for the most part.  So let us continue on with some more of "his" plan.

Cutting Funding:  You have heard the term sanctuary cities.  These cities refuse to turn over illegal migrants to authorities and even go as far as providing benefits and government services to those who come to the United States without permission.  As a punishment, Trump would deny all federal aid to any city that violates the law in this way.  This would to a degree work initially, but as cities should not be getting money from the federal government in the first place and these sanctuary cities get used to doing things with less money, this method will be less effective over time.

Overstaying Visas:  Some illegals actually have come to the United States legally and have gotten a document allowing them to stay called a visa.  However, these visas expire and some either forget or refuse to leave.  Trump wants to have these people brought up on criminal penalties for overstaying.  If local police find such individuals, Trump would have them hold the individuals in question until ICE authorities arrive to take custody of them.  However, in my opinion the only part that is truly usable is the ability for authorities to hold people who have overstayed their visas, and even other illegal migrants for that matter.  Trump also wants to add a visa tracking system as well, but how that would work confuses me.  Save for having a NSA like entity spy on these individuals, I do not see how it will work.

Cooperating with Law Enforcement:  A number of illegals, at least the dangerous kind, are part of gangs like MS-13 and La Familia.  As such, Trump wants ICE to be able to work directly with anti-gang task forces on conducting raids against violent street gangs.  My question is, why are they not already doing this?  And how far does this cooperation go?  Are ICE agents going in with gang task force members on raids, or are they merely part of the process to deport gang members who are found to be here illegally?  I don't know why, but my feeling is that this should have and could be happening already.  Additionally, the FBI used to fight organized crime like gangs, so ICE as another federal police force should have an anti-gang intelligence section already or at least access to FBI intelligence documents.  If not, then they really are lacking and thus a complete reform of the federal police agencies may be needed over simply having ICE work with local police.

Conclusion:  These ideas while smart, fall short once you think about it a little.  As such, I need something better than this to help us solve the immigration problem.  The visa over stayers need to be treated better in my opinion as we let them in.  They were invited and people given visas are given the opportunity to stay and even become a citizen.  So something better needs to be done here.  The cutting funding to sanctuary cities is something I agree with, but for all cities as we should not give money out to anyone so long as there is a national debt to pay off.  As to cooperating with law enforcement.  Why are they not doing this already? That has me concerned, but I am going to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt here.  Any case see you tomorrow for part 4.

Issue 704 Trump's Immigration plan: part 2 October 21, 2015

Yippy, day two...of Trump.  Well let us see what part two of my critique has in store.

National E-Verify:  An accepted idea.  In this case, all people in the United States before they are hired will be checked to see if they are citizens or not.  Basically, this insures only people here legally and of course actual U.S. citizens (or legal residents) may be hired.  So more jobs for the 40% of Black teens, and 30% of Hispanic teens who are citizens but do not have jobs (his numbers, but how he got them, I am not sure).

Return of all Criminal aliens:  Basically, if the illegal has committed a crime in the United States like theft, rape and/or murder, they will be deported back to their home countries.  If the foreign government does not accept their citizens back, then the United States will suspend all visas for all of that country's legal residents in the United States and send them all back home.  While the enforcement mechanism is great, the idea is a little bit wacky.  Reason being is that these illegals who committed the crime will be sent home after a trial to be put in jail in their home countries.  Now, keywords here, "jail in their home countries".  Um, do we really think that the home country wants a citizen back who committed rape, or murder before they have done time. Do we really think they will honor another country's court system and place their citizen in jail?  Now if they served their time with hard labor and then were deported back, then I would say this would work.

Separate Offence:  Something I do not agree with, Trump wants to make it a separate and additional crime to commit an offence while here in the country illegally.  Last I checked, it was already a crime to cross the border illegally.  Also, theft is theft, murder is murder.  We do not need justice losing its blindfolds simply because the perpetrator is here illegally.  

End catch and release:  Trump also wants to make it so that if you are caught crossing here illegally, then you are detained and then deported.  No more releasing them.  This is in reaction to the almost 76,000 illegals who were released into the United States population and told to come back on a specific court date.  Of course, the majority never came in for their court dates.  While this makes sense, it will not work well for the people already here that already disappeared into the population.  Also, these people will be detained for long periods of time if done wrong.  At most currently 250,000 are deported each year out of the 11 million illegals here (source Fox News).  This is because they are hard to find in a country of 300 million people.  Also, Trump wants to be rid of all the illegals as he has stated in earlier statements.  But as the Supreme Court has ruled previously, all the illegals (individually) are entitled to a hearing for asylum or other purposes.  All those court cases, assuming the border is secure, would take 40 years and thus lots of money.  Hence why we either need a new Supreme Court ruling or we need to spend a lot of extra money to make a huge amount of courts to oversee each individual hearing at once.

Conclusion:  I will not say I disagree with the overall ideas that Trump and his team presents here.  However, some just do not seem practical.  As such, National E-verify and an alteration to catch and release where hearings are done almost immediately upon arrest for the new illegals coming in would work with respect to future illegals coming into the country.

Issue 703 Trump's Immigration plan: part 1 October 20, 2015

I do not want Donald Trump to be President, but he makes great press because of his mouth.  As such, I am going to dissect and critique his immigration plan.  It will be seven parts, so that is seven days of Trump.  May it begin!

The Wall:  Trump wants to build the wall between Mexico and the United States.  Something that can potentially work if it resembles the Berlin wall.  This means a double wall/fence with patrols going in-between the two barriers.  Basically it is designed to make it very hard to cross the border by slowing the illegal entrants down long enough for a patrol show up to make an arrest.  However, he wants Mexico to pay for it.  Short of annexing Mexico, the only thing that Trump could do if he became President would be to kick Mexico out of the North American Free Trade Agreement and thus tax goods coming in from Mexico.  Trump did not say we would partner with Mexico, so this change in the status quo for trade relations and thus would create economic issues.

More ICE officers:  ICE officers are the men and women who handle illegal migrants that make it through the border.  However, according to Trump's stats, there are only 5,000 such officers that have to deal with well over eleven million illegal migrants.  Trump wants to use money that comes from tax cheats and others who have defrauded the government to pay for their expansion.  Those people who are considered "defrauders" are illegals who obtained tax identification numbers and claimed tax credits (this is apparently legal to do in the United States).  As such, no more tax credits would go to illegal migrants who were allowed to stay in the United States.   This we all can agree with as with respect to increasing law enforcement and ending tax credits.

Conclusion:  These two parts of his plan are the least controversial.  And thus are supportable by most Americans on both sides of the political aisle.  The only real issue here though is who is going to pay for the wall, and I think it is us the tax payers.