Zo's Illegal Immigration Rant

While I'm disappointed in the Judge's ruling, I can't say that she's wrong. Turns out it's only illegal to be here if you are caught in the act of crossing the border without proper documentation. Once you make it over, it drops to a civil issue and is no longer criminal. I can't believe the geniuses that wrote the law in the first place....My suggestion, first secure the border. Then enforce the law AFTER excluding the 14th amendment provision that allows the children of illegals to become citizens, and modernize the pathway to citizenship. Both Republicans and Democrats are at fault for letting it get to this point since the years of Nixon. 

Anyhow, Zo give's his piece:



I will be doing research in the coming days about our Immigration system.  Be on the lookout.

EPA Puts ‘Environmental Justice’ Front and Center in Its Rulemaking Process

Justice is suppose to be blind right? The environment affects everyone does it not? To every color, sexual preference, etc.....except for you social status.  “Achieving environmental justice is an Agency priority and should be factored into every decision,” the 55-page document reads.  From CNS:

The EPA defines environmental justice as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, particularly minority, low-income, and indigenous populations, and tribes, in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”

The guide states that from now on -- in the process of developing rules, policy statements, risk assessments, and other regulatory actions -- EPA managers and staffers must first ask themselves, “Does this action involve a topic that is likely to be of particular interest to or have particular impact upon minority, low-income, or indigenous populations, or tribes?”
If the answer is yes, the rule-writers must reach out to the affected minority and/or low-income communities. One section of the guide explains how EPA rule-writers may have to make “special efforts” to connect with people who may be uneducated or non-English-speaking.
“It will likely be necessary to tailor outreach materials to be concise, understandable, and readily accessible to the communities you are trying to reach,” the guide says.

My opinion:  Why even consider this?  The entire notion of "social justice" smacks in the face of your rights as a person.  Worrying about the social ramifications of particular groups only hinders the system with bureaucratic red tape, by always making sure that every individual is just as equally affected as another.  Progression in the name of social justice, must take a back seat to the progression of common sense.

FBI to access our Internet data w/o probable cause?

The new rule wouldn’t reach the content of e-mail messages, but it would let them find out whom you’re e-mailing, when you’re e-mailing, and, er, “possibly” which websites you’re looking at and which Google searches you’re running.

Senior administration officials said the proposal was prompted by a desire to overcome concerns and resistance from Internet and other companies that the existing statute did not allow them to provide such data without a court-approved order. “The statute as written causes confusion and the potential for unnecessary litigation,” Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said. “This clarification will not allow the government to obtain or collect new categories of information, but it seeks to clarify what Congress intended when the statute was amended in 1993.”…

Administration officials noted that the act specifies in one clause that Internet and other companies have a duty to provide electronic communication transactional records to the FBI in response to a national security letter.
But the next clause specifies only four categories of basic subscriber data that the FBI may seek: name, address, length of service and toll billing records. There is no reference to electronic communication transactional records.
The officials said the transactional information at issue, which does not include Internet search queries, is the functional equivalent of telephone toll billing records, which the FBI can obtain without court authorization. Learning the e-mail addresses to which an Internet user sends messages, they said, is no different than obtaining a list of numbers called by a telephone user.

They can be more revealing, of course: A call made to a pay phone won’t identify who’s on the other end of the line whereas an e-mail sent to an address that contains someone’s name tells you right away whom it’s meant for. But of course, the opposite scenario’s also possible: A call made to someone’s home phone or cell phone points to the identity of the recipient whereas a message sent to an e-mail address with no identifying info in the address reveals little at first glance about who owns it. Exit question: Should e-mail identifiers be given greater protection? And if so, is that simply in order to draw a line on the slope before the feds slip any further downward?

Must read from CBO Director's blog: cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1249

Couple of Links to Check Out

• Chevy Volt...is it worth it?
• By this time last year 64 banks had been taken over by the FDIC...this year so far, it's 103
• After today's ruling for Arizona, you wouldn't expect this.  Feds to enforce a fingerprint database for Mortage Brokers.  Priorities I guess.
• Sign of the times...a teacher in Philly is fired for doing the right thing
• The Securities and Exchange Commission is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act thanks to the Financial Regulation Bill.  So much for transparency]
• Thanks to nature, the oil slick in the Gulf is "disappearing" rapidly.  We can stop the hysterics now.

Sorry for not posting tonight. Will double post tomorrow to make up for this

Paul Ryan explains Economic Plan to Chris Matthews

The GOP has failed to adhere to the conservative points they've preached and we dealing with the results of that. (Why do you think people don't trust them?) Ryan's plan revolves about what the GOP lacked, faith in those very principles and ideas that every individual citizen inherently knows when faced with a personal financial crisis. Ignore the party affiliation and take a look at what he's come up with.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Totally owned Matthews.  I'll give it to him, he's the one member of the GOP that I trust, period and to have the balls to go onto MSNBC and handle their hosts.  Matthew's interested in playing gotcha with the GOP’s fiscal genius to make it look like Ryan lacks the political courage to endorse deep, specific cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security. That’s why he’s quick to scoff when PR touts a way to trim $4.8 trillion from the budget; Matthews hears it initially as $4.8 billion because he’s eager to accuse the Republican of not being serious. Matthews wonders aloud why Ryan isn’t talking about cutting nondiscretionary spending and forgets that he hadn’t asked him about that. 
Apparently MSNBC does a bang up job of reporting on the news.  This isn't an example of it.

How the Government is Funded

The government does not “create” wealth or print money. It takes loans out from its bank. Contrary to popular belief, it’s the Federal Reserve that retains the ability to print money for the United States and is completely separate from the orders of our government. Kind of like how you can’t tell your bank what to do when you are the one asking for a loan. For every dollar printed by the Reserve, our government must pay that back plus interest. When a request is made for more money (printing money) the value of our dollar decreases for every new dollar printed.  (Remember that for later)

Since the government doesn’t make money, how does it pay for the loan? The United States Government obtains its money from 2 sources:

1. Intergovernmental Loans : The following countries own 40% total of our debt through loans (not including interest):
• China (30.7%)
• Japan (20.5%)
• UK (6.2%)
• Foreign Oil (5.8%)
• Brazil (4.6%)
• Russia (3.2%)
2. Public Debt: 60% of our debt is paid for by individual Americans through taxation. Methods of taxation on individuals include:
• Federal Income: the U.S. uses citizenship in addition to residency in determining whether a person's income is subject to U.S. taxation.
• Payroll: taxes taken from every paycheck of every person in the U.S.
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Unemployment
• Corporate Income
• Transfer: Otherwise known as the “death” tax
• Gift: levied on wealth transfers during the transferor's life
• Estate: levied on transfers made after the transferor's death.
• Generation Skipping Transfer: levied on transfers made during life or after death to individuals removed by more than one generation from the transferor, for example, from a grandmother to a grandson
• Excise: Social “sin” tax on items/services like gasoline, tobacco, firearms, airfare and alcohol, tanning, etc

Realistically, the only income that the government does have to pay for the loans through the Federal Reserve and Intergovernmental Loans is through taxation. So the bottom line is that the money comes from us as individual citizens. Hopefully I didn’t lose you.

So let’s break down the different taxes that affect the middle and lower classes, since that’s most of the general public. Side note: currently, 49% of the general public does not pay income tax because they don’t make more than the poverty level. That being said, the average person and business will pay a payroll tax (if they are receiving any paychecks) and excise taxes. What most of the general public doesn’t know (and most politicians and public figures don’t want you to know) is that we are also paying corporate taxes as well. I’ve explained this in my economic model for a business; you can review that at any time.  Businesses are another way for the government to tax the public without directly saying they are taxing the public.

Everytime a politician explains that they will raise the taxes from Corporations, they are in effect, raising taxes on the public as a whole.  Especially if the Company provides a service or product that most of us use, like oil for example.  From the economic business model, we know that a tax is treated like an expense, which means that a business has to compensate for that loss in some way.  Employment, stocks, job benefits and the cost of goods are the choices businesses have to adjust as a result of the added expense. 

Part of the reason why the price of goods go up is because taxes are raised. If any of a companies expenses can't be cut, usually the price of their service does to make up that loss. In addition, when money is printed, the devaluing of the dollar also raises the price of goods since it takes more money to equal the "true" value of a dollar. The consumer, or individual, ends up paying.  Since we make up the majority of the country, its the middle and lower classes paying.

So, in short, our government makes money by taking money from the people they serve.  Businesess are essentially tax collectors by transferring the money they collect from the public to pay the government.  Add the excise taxes and we're footing the bill.  Adding government programs without streamlining or fixing the ones we have, means a new tax.  More funding for broken systems means a new tax.  As the deficit increases, and talk of raising taxes on businesses come up, you now know what that means.

Mind you, I covered the Federal level; remember the State taxes you as well.

Ryan suggests GOP playing politics by not discussing Roadmap

Simply put, the GOP is acting stupidly. A commitment is needed to fix the system for the public and private sectors.  Examples of successful conservative principles working?  Look no further than NJ, VA, Germany, etc. Listen to this guy explain economics:



For more information about Paul Ryan's Roadmap for America, visit the website.  The guy has planned out economic policies for just about everything.....and it makes sense!

Britain's dropping Government Healthcare....while we move forward (UPDATE)

After many opponents in the US have pointed out the problems with burdening taxpayers, complicating the system, and red tape slowing down service and choices.  Or that the IRS announced that they did not have the resources to enforce the Healthcare mandate, or the Government dumping high risk patients due to the limited budget in the healthcare bill who would've seen this coming:

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
The plan would also shrink the bureaucratic apparatus, in keeping with the government’s goal to effect $30 billion in “efficiency savings” in the health budget by 2014 and to reduce administrative costs by 45 percent. Tens of thousands of jobs would be lost because layers of bureaucracy would be abolished.
In a document, or white paper, outlining the plan, the government admitted that the changes would “cause significant disruption and loss of jobs.” But it said: “The current architecture of the health system has developed piecemeal, involves duplication and is unwieldy. Liberating the N.H.S., and putting power in the hands of patients and clinicians, means we will be able to effect a radical simplification, and remove layers of management.” (emphasis mine)

It's been said that the centralization of any private industry results in less choice, bureaucratic red tape and wasteful spending.  The private sector does provide choices and at competitive rates.  The UK seems to realize that very simple thing when their government realizes that it has to make difficult cuts in their budget as a result of the downturn in the economy. 

That's the UK.  The real question is if the Democrats here realize that before we go through another crisis in the future.

(Update) I was a bit premature in my assessment.  via Ed from Hotair

This plan does not transform the NHS into anything else but a single-payer system. English citizens still have to get their health care from the government. However, the plan removes the rationing boards that have clogged the decision-making process and allows GPs and their patients to decide on the best course of treatment.

While that sounds great, it’s a recipe for disaster. In a closed system like single-payer, the resources are necessarily limited. This will increase demand while doing nothing to increase resources, which will create a deficit bomb bigger than anything already at NHS. That’s probably why another shoe dropped yesterday at NHS:

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:

* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.

Dr. Donald Berwick proclaimed NHS a “treasure,” a comment that Republicans in Congress wanted to explore in Berwick’s confirmation hearing. What would Berwick do under the pressures at NHS today, if such a crisis hit Medicare and Medicaid? It’s no secret that both are facing these kinds of cost and resource issues. Simply demanding more money won’t work, as the UK has discovered after sixty years of single-payer health care.

The best way to get pricing and cost equilibrium in the health-care market is to use competition and free-market economics. That doesn’t mean the status quo ante ObamaCare, but an elimination of tax credits that favor third-party payers for routine care and the promotion of HSAs and full retail clinic pricing. Until that happens, the governmental burdens will continue to create artificial shortages, and will mean higher costs, more government intrusion in our lives, and less accountability.

TARP audit on dealer shutdowns: Ethnic, gender issues trumped economics

(via Hotair)
The difference between private-sector decisions on business consolidation and those under government supervision gets exposed in a portion of Neil Barofsky’s audit of the government-driven closures of GM auto dealerships during the $62 billion bailout. There may be a question of whether the automakers needed to consolidate in order to shed poorly performing dealerships at all, but we’ll get back to that. The plan to consolidate dealerships that resulted from the push by the car czar and TARP used rational, objective measures to select the target outlets. In practice, those often got ignored in favor of politics, according to the audit:

GM determined that dealerships with a DPS Score of 100 were average performers; those below 70 were considered poor performers and would not be retained. SIGTARP noted, however, that GM did not uniformly apply the phase one criteria to the entire network. For example, our analysis found that two of the wind-down dealers did not meet either criterion. Furthermore, we found that, of the dealerships that met only one of the two criteria:

GM retained 355 (or approximately 41 percent) of the 858 dealerships that had a DPS score below 70.16
GM retained 9 of the 394 dealerships that sold fewer than 50 new vehicles in 2008.17
An additional 10 dealerships with a DPS score below 70 were in phase two wind-downs.
GM officials attributed these inconsistencies primarily to a desire to maintain coverage in certain rural areas where they have a competitive advantage over import auto companies that are not typically located in rural areas, although ultimately close to half of all of the GM dealerships identified for termination were in rural areas. Other dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships (emphasis mine).
On June 1, 2009, GM filed for bankruptcy. As indicated earlier in this report, bankruptcy would permit GM to accelerate the process without the restriction of state franchise laws. Bankruptcy laws supersede various state franchise laws, which could have required litigation or arbitration. GM management had also determined that the company would need to wind down more dealerships than those designated in phase one to get close enough to the “ideal network size” of 3,380 dealerships.

A couple of points should be made clear on this. Nothing in the report says that the Obama administration forced GM into these specific decisions, and apparently this didn’t happen with Chrysler’s closures. Nevertheless, it seems certain that GM would have been particularly sensitive to political considerations after begging for an receiving tens of billions of dollars to unwind its collapsing finances. If the point was saving money through the closures, GM didn’t act as if they had so much need for that to trump political considerations.


There’s a reason for that, too. The American Thinker points out that Barofsky actually found that closing dealerships wouldn’t save the automakers all that much money, anyway. A Chrysler exec told the Special Inspector General for TARP that at best it each closure would save less than $46,000, although GM put the savings at $1.1 million. But the issue was scalable, as lower performing dealerships ate up less resources anyway. One GM exec said closures weren’t going to make much difference at all:

GM would usually save ‘not one damn cent’ by closing any particular dealership. … Furthermore, a GM official stated that removing a dealership from the network does not save money for GM — it might even cost GM money — and that savings cannot be attributed or assigned to any one dealership.
 
So why close them if doing so would not save any real money? After all, both automakers need a substantial retail network to maintain their sales output. Michelle Malikin explains why politics trumped business concerns:
 
In search of the rationale for Team Obama’s bizarre, job-killing exercise of power over thousands of small car dealerships, the TARP inspector general may have stumbled onto the truth from Bloom. On page 33 of its report, Barofsky writes that “no one from Treasury, the manufacturers or from anywhere else indicated that implementing a smaller or more gradual dealership termination plan would have resulted in the cataclysmic scenario spelled out in Treasury’s response; indeed, when asked explicitly whether the Auto Team could have left the dealerships out of the restructurings, Mr. Bloom, the current head of the Auto Team, confirmed that the Auto Team ‘could have left any one component (of the restructuring plan) alone,’ but that doing so would have been inconsistent with the President’s mandate for ‘shared sacrifice.’”
 
In other words,we destroyed tens of thousands of jobs in the private sector for a soundbite about sacrifice. In doing so, we weakened the economy and handicapped the automakers’ ability to push sales through their network of dealerships. A board that made those kinds of decisions in the private sector would get sacked by its shareholders — which is why those decisions should have stayed in the private sector in the first place, and taxpayers shouldn’t have had to shoulder the risk.
 
I swear I'm getting that Ayn Rand "social goodness" vibe.....

Reid to drop cap-and-trade from new energy bill

Really, though? Democrats, who are already terrified of losing Congress, are going to surf into the midterms with an eleventh-hour push for a hugely expensive new bill related to … global warming? With the GOP already armed with ad-ready video of Obama talking about how it’ll make energy prices “skyrocket”?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will bring a limited package of oil spill response and energy measures to the floor next week, delaying action until at least this fall on a broader proposal that would impose greenhouse gas limits on power plants, senior Senate Democratic aides said.

Aides insisted Reid’s decision is a nod to the packed floor schedule the Senate faces before it leaves in two weeks for the August recess, and that he he has not abandoned plans to try and bring up a broader climate and energy plan later in the year…
For now, the limited package expected on the floor this month will likely allow Democrats to push through a response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — such as tougher rig safety requirements — and perhaps some energy provisions that members of both parties could support.

Mind you this is only a scheduling move until September, how much do you want to bet they push this through a lame-duck session after elections?  I'm pretty game.