Tài liệu Coyote Blog, Year Two Archives, Volume Two docx

Now we can see the end result: Instead of fixing the actual problem, which is people who need care not getting it, they fix the problem as it was discussed: they literally forced people

Coyote Blog: The Second Year

Volume 2: April, 2006 to September, 2006

By Warren Meyer

Copyright © Warren Meyer, 2005

Table of Contents

Forward 5

April, 2006 6

Supreme Court Asleep 8

Immigration and the "Legality" Issue 9

Massachusetts Insurance Fiasco 11

Damages and Double Jeopardy 13

More on Massachusetts Health Insurance 14

My Worst Vendor Guess Who? 16

Limiting Free Speech Unifies Congress 18

The Peak Whale Theory 20

I'll Try Again Why The Trade Deficit is Not a Debt 22

Disturbing Trade News From China 29

May, 2006 33

My Immigration Reform Plan 34

Real Price Collusion Requires the Government 43

If it Passes, I'm Turning Off the Pumps 47

So Why Not Cuba? 54

Reconciling the Skilling Verdicts 63

Price Controls at Work 65

Are People Rational About Gas Prices? 66

The Connection Between Paul Ehrlich and Immigration Opponents 68

An Absurd Demand 71

June, 2006 75

The Obesity Obsession 77

Eminent Domain, But Without the Compensation 78

Statism Bites its Creators 79

July, 2006 85

Thoughts on Detentions 85

State of Arizona Channeling Enron 96

In Case You Thought Anti-Trust Was About Consumers 97

Estate Tax Confusion 98

Guilt or Innocence is Irrelevant, I Guess 103

A Skeptics Primer for "An Inconvenient Truth" 105

World's Largest Banana Republic 118

Answer: Wealth 119

August, 2006 120

Virtues of a Carbon Tax 120

Thoughts on Net Neutrality 121

I Have Government Derangement Syndrome 122

Thanks, China! 124

Katrina was Government Revealed 130

In Case You Thought Anti-Trust Was About Consumers, Part 2 132

Pre-Season College Football Rankings are the Most Important 140

Leaving Poverty in China 140

More Zero Sum Economics (Sigh) 142

Progressives in Their Own Words 150

Immigration Opponents Depend on Bad Public Schools 152

Free Market Does Not Mean Pro-Business 160

Ignoring a Positive Cancer Test 161

The Skeptical Middle Ground on Warming 162

September, 2006 164

Free Speech, But Only If Its Bilateral 164

Urban Heat Islands 165

Wanted: Honesty of Purpose 167

You Can't Make Decisions for Yourself 168

Circumscribing the "War on Terror" 170

What are People Afraid Of? 173

Coyote's Law and 9/11 177

Get Wal-Mart Out of the Public Trough 179

Arizona Minimum Wage Ballot Initiative 180

Broken Window Fallacy, On Steroids 183

More Anti-Immigration Scare Stats 184

Sanction of the Victim 190

You've Never Had It So Bad 192

Anti-Trust is Anti-Consumer 196

Index to Articles 202

This book is an archive of my blogging efforts at www.CoyoteBlog.com for the second year of the blog's existence, a time period stretching from April, 2006 to September 2006

A text record of a blog is by its nature very imperfect The real advantage of blogging, beyond its

immediacy and low-cost reach, is the ability to link other online sources to extend or provide backup for a particular article, called a “post” Throughout this print record, you will see phrases that are underlined like this In the original electronic version, these were links where readers could click through to view related material on other web sites I have chosen to leave this underlining in this text version, as an aid to understanding where richer content was available to the original online readership Another important point of style is that blog posts typically quote heavily from other sources as part of the commentary:Rather than using quotation marks, most quotes are indented and printed in italics, like this

In compiling this archive, I have chosen to remove many of the original posts Most of these removed posts were short posts whose main purpose was to point readers to other interesting content on the web, and as such are nearly meaningless in a printed version

I have done some cleanup of spelling and grammar, but readers of this printed version should recognize that blogging is a real-time activity and readers generally do not expect publication quality prose Along these same lines, you will encounter a number of Internet abbreviations, including LOL (laughing out Loud), OMG (Oh My God), and Fisk (to tear apart someone else's argument line by line) Readers online would have been very familiar with these shortcuts You may also note that a number of the articles have sections at the end marked as “Update” This is additional information added to the text after it was originally posted, consistent with the dynamic and real-time nature of blogging

Finally, given the sheer volume of material here and the near certainty that few people will be interested enough to plow through it all, I have highlighted some of my favorite posts in the Table of Contents on the previous page The index at the back contains a full listing of all the articles included in this volume

Warren Meyer

“Coyote”

January, 2008

April, 2006

Force over Choice

Progressives often wrap themselves up in a lot of libertarian-sounding jargon But when push comes to shove, progressives are more comfortable with coercion than free association James Taranto links this piece in his Friday Best of the Web:

A longtime singer and guitarist with the Zucchini Brothers and a substitute teaching assistant

for Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES [school board], Powell has lived

frugally for years He works about three days a week as a sub, earning about $70 a day, with no benefits From March to October, he rides his bike 20 miles to work when work is available

Part of that survival or so he thought included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of

cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children Then his discussions about

Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him

"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health

insurance for staffers "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."

He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart

any longer

Please observe the moral choice he made that is being applauded by those on the left: Rather than get low cost food from Wal-mart, which generally* transacts with its suppliers, employers, and customers through mutual self-interest and the consent of all parties in each transaction, he has decided it is MORE MORAL to get his food expropriated from the American taxpayer without their consent Lovely By the way, it is ironic that he is mad that Wal-mart employees accepts jobs with no health benefits when he in fact has made the same choice himself

More on what makes progressives tick here

*The exception being that Wal-Mart does use the force of government via imminent domain to obtain land where the free will of landowners would not cooperate and to get special tax credits from local

governments to get area citizenry to subsidize its business If Mr Powell were to protest these practices, I would be all for it, but my guess is that he is not protesting government handouts to Walmart by signing

up for government handouts for himself

Posted on April 1, 2006 at 09:16 AM

Politics Negates Belief

One of the advantages of not being a partisan of either the Democrats or Republicans is that I have more flexibility to actually say what I believe, without worrying that something I am saying might actually give

aid and comfort to my political enemies I have always felt that it is really, really difficult and rare to become actively political without sacrificing consistency in your deeply held beliefs, particularly since both parties represent such an inconsistent hodge-podge of positions The irony of this has been, at least until the advent of blogging, that I could be smug about maintaining my philosophic virginity but I left myself

no avenue to make any impact with my strongly held beliefs

Given this, I was therefore struck by this, from Cathy Young at Reason, writing about Yale's future Taliban student:

One striking aspect of this controversy is the reaction from Yale's liberal community Della

Sentilles, a Yale senior, recently wrote a piece for the Yale Herald denouncing such

manifestations of rampant misogyny at Yale as the shortage of tenured female professors and

poor childcare options On her blog, a reader asked Sentilles about the presence at Yale of a

former spokesman for one of the world's most misogynistic regimes Her reply: "As a white

American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other

cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than

another American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends."

It appears Ms Sentilles, beyond having a lot of multi-cultural baggage, is terrified that if she actually criticizes Afghanistan in any way, she is somehow giving aid and comfort to the Bush administration, which feminists have declared enemy #1 The politics of US presidential elections, in this case, trump criticizing a regime that treated women worse (by far) than the US has at any time in its history Which of course is one of the reasons* that women's groups in this country are sliding into irrelevance, putting their support of a broad range of leftish causes above speaking out on what is essentially apartheid-for-women

in the Middle East (I say essentially, because women are actually far worse off in much of the Middle East than blacks ever were in South Africa) Whereas a decade ago the left was marching in the street to better the lot of blacks in South Africa, they are strangely mum on women in the Middle East

As a result, I can lament the condition of women in the Middle East, acknowledge that Saddam was a blight on humanity, but still oppose the war in Iraq as not worth the cost (when "cost" is defined broadly enough to include not must money and men but also opportunity cost) I can adopt this position because I

am not required to put on the Republican happy face or Democratic America-always-sucks face

* Another reason is that it may be time for women to declare victory

Posted on April 1, 2006 at 10:44 PM

More Trouble Than I Thought at GM

Today's announcement that GM will sell 51% of their GMAC financing arm really brought home to me how bad things are at GM I haven't really followed the situation, but I had assumed that GM was facing the same type demographic bomb as the airlines, fat and underfunded pensions and retiree health care benefits promised when times were good and US auto makers didn't face much troubling competition.Here is what I found interesting: GMAC is reported to make about $2.5 - 3 billion a year in profits This might tend to imply a value of at least $25 to $30 billion, which is confirmed by the fact that GM just sold half for $14 billion But GM as a whole has a market cap of just under twelve billion This means that their entire manufacturing business is valued in the market at roughtly -$16 Billion Yes, negative sixteen

billion Another way to look at this is that if instead of selling GMAC yesterday, GM had instead sold all

of their automotive manufacturing, brands, designs, etc to someone for $1, and became a pure financing business, GM shareholders would be richer by $16 billion, the equivilent of raising the current stock price from about $21 to about $49

Posted on April 3, 2006 at 09:05 AM

Supreme Court Asleep

The Supreme Court refused to review the Padilla case:

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the appeal of Jose Padilla, a U.S citizen held in

a military jail for more than three years as an "enemy combatant." The Court, however,

declined to dismiss the case as moot, as the Bush Administration had urged Only three Justices

voted to hear the case, according to the order and accompanying opinions The case was Padilla

v Hanft (05-533).

The decision was a victory for the Bush Administration in one significant sense: by not finding

the case to be moot, the Court leaves intact a sweeping Fourth Circuit Court decision

upholding the president's wartime power to seize an American inside the U.S and detain him

or her as a terrorist enemy, without charges and for an extended period without a lawyer

The Court, of course, took no position on whether that was the right result, since it denied

review The Second Circuit Court, at an earlier stage of Padilla's own case, had ruled just the

opposite of the Fourth Circuit, denying the president's power to seize him in the U.S and hold

him That ruling, though, no longer stands as a precedent, since the Supreme Court earlier

shifted Padilla's case from the Second to the Fourth Circuit

I don't even pretend to understand all the procedural stuff, but I find it amazing that the effective

suspension of habeas corpus, particularly when the "war" and "enemy" that is used as its justification is so amorphous and open-ended, isn't something the Supreme Court would like to sink its teeth into

Apparently, the Justices were reluctant to address the case since it has now been made "hypothetical" by the transfer of status of Padilla from enemy combatant held incommunicado indefinitely to a more

mainstream justice track However, this transfer occurred, as the appeals court pointed out angrily, in a transparent effort by the Bush administration to avoid judicial review of indefinite detentions Which raises the possibility that the administration could hold hundreds of people in such detention,

systematically changing the status of any individual whose case comes for review, thereby avoiding review

of the program in total As Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, "Nothing prevents the Executive from returning to the road it earlier constructed and defended."

One wonders by this logic if the segregationist south could have indefinitely postponed Supreme Court review via Brown vs Board of Education just by letting individuals like Linda Brown individually into white schools whenever their cases got to the Supreme Court

And still I ask, as I did here, where the hell is Congress? I am sorry the Supreme Court failed to review this but the Constitution created this group called the legislative branch that is supposed to have the power to change the law If law is unclear here, they could make it clear

Posted on April 4, 2006 at 08:44 AM

Immigration and the "Legality" Issue

I know some may be bored with my immigration posts, so if you are, that's cool, you can ignore the rest I have done something of late I normally don't do: I have tuned into conservative talk radio for bits and pieces of time over the last several days to get the gist of their arguments to limit immigration The main arguments I have heard are:

1 Illegal immigrants are breaking the law

2 We should not reward law-breaking with amnesty We need to round these folks up that are

breaking the law and teach them a lesson Or put them in concentration camps if that were

logistically feasible

3 We don't like first generation Mexican immigrants carrying the Mexican flag in parades (though

we love it when 4th generation Irish carry Irish flags in parades)

A recent commenter on my post defending open immigration, which is superseded by this

pro-immigration post I like better, had this related insight:

1 YOUARE ILLEGAL

2 YOU ARE ILLEGAL

3 YOU ARE ILLEGAL

4 YOU ARE ILLEGAL

5 YOU ARE ILLEGAL

6-10000000 YOU ARE ILLEGAL

DO I NEED TO WRITE THIS IN SPANISH SO THAT THE ILLEGALS CAN UNDERSTAND

IF YOU CAN READ THIS THEN YOU DID PASS THE BASIC ENGLISH TEST THAT IS

RREQUIRED OF ALL LEAGAL MIGRANTS !!!

OH, BTW, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY THIS, BECAUSE I AM LEGAL!!

It sure is comforting that us "leagal migrants" have to pass a basic English test, or we might come off as idiots when we post comments online But you get the gist My first thought is that this is certainly a circular argument To answer my premise that "immigration should be legal for everyone" with the

statement that "it is illegal" certainly seems to miss the point (it kind of reminds me of the king of swamp castle giving instructions to his guards in Monty Python and the Holy Grail) The marginally more

sophisticated statement that "it is illegal and making it legal would only reward lawbreakers" would seem

to preclude any future relaxation of any government regulation

Many people writing on this topic today lapse into pragmatic arguments ala "well, how would we pick the lettuce without them?" Frequent readers of this site will notice I seldom if ever resort to this type argument (except perhaps when I argued that immigration might be a solution to the demographic bomb in medicare and social security) My argument is simpler but I hear it discussed much less frequently: By what right are these folks "illegal"?

What does it mean to be living in this country? Well, immigrants have to live somewhere, which

presupposes they rent or buy living space from me or one of my neighbors Does the government have the right to tell me who I can and can't transact with? Most conservatives would (rightly) say "no," except what they really seem to mean is "no, as long as that person you are leasing a room to was born within

some arbitrary lines on the map The same argument goes for immigrants contracting their labor (ie

getting a job) Normally, most conservatives would (rightly again) say that the government can't tell you who you can and can't hire And by the way, note exactly what is being criminalized here - the illegal activity these folks are guilty of is making a life for their family and looking for work Do you really want

to go down the path of making these activities illegal? Or check out the comment again above She/he implies that immigrants without the proper government papers don't even have speech rights, rights that even convicted felons have in this country

By the way, I understand that voting and welfare type handouts complicate this and can't be given day 1 to everyone who crosses the border I dealt in particular with the issue of New Deal social services killing immigration here

Our rights to association and commerce and free movement and speech flow from our humanity, not from the government As I wrote before:

Like the founders of this country, I believe that our individual rights exist by the very fact of

our existance as thinking human beings, and that these rights are not the gift of kings or

congressmen Rights do not flow to us from government, but in fact governments are formed

by men as an artificial construct to help us protect those rights, and well-constructed

governments, like ours, are carefully limited in their powers to avoid stifling the rights we have inherently as human beings

Do you see where this is going? The individual rights we hold dear are our rights as human

beings, NOT as citizens They flow from our very existence, not from our government As

human beings, we have the right to assemble with whomever we want and to speak our

minds We have the right to live free of force or physical coercion from other men We have

the right to make mutually beneficial arrangements with other men, arrangements that might

involve exchanging goods, purchasing shelter, or paying another man an agreed upon rate for

his work We have these rights and more in nature, and have therefore chosen to form

governments not to be the source of these rights (for they already existed in advance of

governments) but to provide protection of these rights against other men who might try to

violate these rights through force or fraud

These rights of speech and assembly and commerce and property shouldn't, therefore, be

contingent on "citizenship" I should be able, equally, to contract for service from David in

New Jersey or Lars in Sweden David or Lars, who are equally human beings, have the equal

right to buy my property, if we can agree to terms If he wants to get away from cold winters

in Sweden, Lars can contract with a private airline to fly here, contract with another person to

rent an apartment or buy housing, contract with a third person to provide his services in

exchange for wages But Lars can't do all these things today, and is excluded from these

transactions just because he was born over some geographic line? To say that Lars or any other

"foreign" resident has less of a right to engage in these decisions, behaviors, and transactions

than a person born in the US is to imply that the US government is somehow the source of the

right to pursue these activities, WHICH IT IS NOT

Disclosure: A number of my great-grandparents were immigrants from Germany When they came over,

most were poor, uneducated, unskilled and could not speak English Several never learned to speak English Many came over and initially took agricultural jobs and other low-skilled work Because the new

country was intimidating to them, they tended to gather together in heavily German neighborhoods and small towns Now, of course, this description makes them totally different from most immigrants today that we want to shut the door on because um, because, uh Help me out, because why?

PS - And please don't give me the "government's job is defend the borders" argument Government's job is

to defend its people, which only occasionally in cases of direct attack involves defending the borders I am

sick of the rhetorical trick of taking people like the "minutemen" and describing them as patriots defending the border, when this nomenclature just serves to hide the fact that these folks are bravely stopping

unarmed human beings from seeking employment or reuniting with their families And I will absolutely guarantee that the borders will be easier to patrol against real criminals and terrorists sneaking in when the background noise of millions of peaceful and non-threatening people are removed from the picture and routed through legal border crossings

Posted on April 5, 2006 at 12:12 AM

Massachusetts Insurance Fiasco

Insurance legislation passed in Massachusetts:

The bill requires that, as of July 1, 2007, all residents of the Commonwealth must obtain flood

insurance coverage, even if they don't live in a flood plain The purpose of this “Individual

Mandate” is to strengthen and stabilize the functioning of flood insurance risk pools by making sure they include people outside of flood plains with no flood risk as well as people who know they live in a flood plain

What? We have to get insurance, even if we think there is no risk and the insurance is just wasted money? Yes indeed, that is correct Well, almost correct I changed a few words The actual wording of the bill, sent to me by reader L Cole, mandates unwanted health insurance rather than unwanted flood insurance:The bill requires that, as of July 1, 2007, all residents of the Commonwealth must obtain health

insurance coverage The purpose of this “Individual Mandate” is to strengthen and stabilize

the functioning of health insurance risk pools by making sure they include healthy people

(who, if not offered employer-sponsored and -paid insurance, are more likely to take the risk of not having insurance) as well as people who know they need regular health care services

More from Bloomberg

For years I have criticized the argument which says that the problem with the health care system is that there are too many uninsured people My argument was always that there were many people who choose

to self-insure, and that the real "problem," if there is one, is how many people there are who need care but can't get it (a much much smaller number that is never discussed) Just look at the attached bill - the

justification is that there are people uninsured, not that there are people unserved Now we can see the end result: Instead of fixing the actual problem, which is people who need care not getting it, they fix the problem as it was discussed: they literally forced people to get health insurance, even if they don't want or need it Now some elected weenie can say "in Massachusetts, we have licked the problem of people

without health insurance." Reminds me of this Rush song

Like many parallel bills proposed in other states, this one requires businesses to provide health insurance

or to pay into a state fund if they don't But the bill also has this scary provision:

The Free Rider surcharge will be imposed on employers who do not provide health insurance

and whose employees use free care Imposition of the surcharge will be triggered when an

employee receives free care more than three times, or a company has five or more instances of

employees receiving free care in a year

First, as an employer, why am I a free rider? It is not me that received any free services or care My

employees medical problem is not my fault (or else it would be workers comp) If I hire someone that takes advantage of government loans to send their kids to college, am I a free rider? If my employees choose subsidized mass transportation over driving their own cars, am I a free rider?

Second, I sure hope all you poorer folks with health problems understand that it is now going to be really hard to find a job in Massachusetts No employer in their right mind is going to hire someone who may trigger this liability This provision would be a disaster for our company, since we tend to hire older retired people (with lots of health problems) for seasonal work (for which it is impossible to structure a health insurance plan) Fortunately, I guess, Massachusetts is one of the states our company red-lined years ago as a place we will never do business, so this does not change our strategy much

I have no idea what this will cost taxpayers and businesses in Mass., but I am positive it is substantially more than the bill's sponsors have let on And there is a lot of hand-waving going on by supporters who insist that this bill will drive premium costs way down that strikes me as bullshit as well

Update: This article in Business Week provides some insight into the 500,000 uninsured in Mass

Supporters of the bill claim that 100,000 of these are poor people who qualify for Medicare but haven't bothered to sign up 200,000 are higher income folks who could afford insurance but choose not to buy it The other 200,000 are people they claim can't afford it, but surely even if they could, some portion would choose not to buy it So by the admission of the bill's supporters, at least 60% and probably more of the uninsured are that way because they choose to be Lets come up with a costly socialization of the medical industry in order to force on people something they don't necessarily want or need

Posted on April 5, 2006 at 12:54 PM

What 6th Amendment?

I have written several times on prosecutorial abuse, most recently in this post on the Justice Department's current practice of forcing companies to waive attorney-client privilege and punishing companies that help their employees seek legal council

The WSJ($) editorializes about a recent division by Judge Lewis Kaplan in the KPMG trial

Those steps were extraordinary in their attempt to pressure corporate executives: They include waiving attorney-client privilege to give investigators access to internal documents and cutting off accused employees from legal and other forms of support In short, the Thompson memo

said that companies under investigation are expected to surrender any right against

self-incrimination and cut their accused employees adrift

In one sense, the memo's guidelines are just that internal guidelines for prosecutors But as a

practical matter, only a rare CEO will risk the death sentence that a corporate indictment

represents So "cooperation" as defined by Justice is hardly optional It was on this point that

Judge Kaplan took Assistant U.S Attorney Justin Weddle to task last week When Judge

Kaplan questioned the fairness of pressuring companies to throw their employees overboard,

Mr Weddle replied that companies are "free to say, 'We're not going to cooperate.'"

"That's lame," the judge retorted He then asked Mr Weddle "what legitimate purpose" was

served by insisting that companies cut their former employees off from legal support

Companies under investigation, Judge Kaplan noted, ought to be free to decide whether to

support their employees or former employees without Justice's "thumb on the scale."

Mr Weddle replied that paying the legal fees of former employees charged with crimes

amounted to protecting "wrongdoers." This prompted the judge to remind the young

prosecutor that the accused are still innocent until proven guilty He also reminded Mr

Weddle that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel And for good measure, if the government is confident in its case, it shouldn't be afraid to allow "wrongdoers" access to an adequate defense

Its good to see these practices starting to get some judicial scrutiny There is unfortunately no real political constituency in this country to get worked up about this kind of stuff Left-leaning groups tend to be the first to challenge police and prosecutorial abuses of power, but have little interest in doing so when the target (ie corporations) is someone they have no ideological sympathy for And right-leaning groups tend

to be strong law-and-order types that feel the need to go out of their way to be tough on recent corporate transgressors to avoid the accusation that they are in bed politically with white collar criminals

Posted on April 6, 2006 at 08:50 AM

Damages and Double Jeopardy

I saw the other day that Merck lost another Vioxx trial, with the jury awarding $4.5 million to a man who had a heart attack after taking Vioxx I won't get into my problems with this type of litigation today, but I did in many other posts like this one (and this and this)

My question today revolves around the fact that this trial is now going into the punitive damages phase, where the jury will decide if Merck owes more money as a punishment not narrowly for this man's heart attack (for which they are paying $4.5 million) but more generally for Merck's actions in bringing the drug

to market at all

Here's the problem: A jury in Texas already hit Merck with $259 million in punitive damages* This number was based on a lot of testimony about Merck's sales and profits from Vioxx, so it was presumably aimed at punishing Merck for "errors" in their whole Vioxx program So if that is the case, how can Merck end up facing a jury again coming up with a separate punitive damage award for the same "crime"? Sure,

it makes sense that Merck can owe actual damages to individual claimants in trial after trial But how can they owe punitive damages for the whole Vioxx program over and over again? Aren't they being

punished over and over for the same misdeed, violating their Constitutional protection against double jeopardy?

I'm not sure what the solution is One approach, of course, would be to say that punitive damages can only be awarded once, which would effectively mean they would go to the first plaintiff to win his case I

am not sure this makes a lot of sense from a public policy point of view, but it would be highly entertaining

to watch tort lawyers knocking themselves over and maneuvering to be the first verdict, knowing that if

they are first,they would get 30% of hundreds of millions of dollars but if they are second they get 30% of much much less, since punitive damages are always far larger than actual damages.

*Under Texas law, this amount will likely be reduced, but it doesn't change the fact of double jeopardy

Posted on April 6, 2006 at 09:21 AM

More on Massachusetts Health Insurance

I loved this email received at Maggie's Farm:

What are you guys smoking over there? Here I am in Massachusetts, without health insurance, and with a family of four, and all that has happened is on top of having to pay full freight for

my family's doctor bills, I get fined $1000.00 for the privelege

I don't want your stinking welfare greenstamp department of motor vehicle government cheese copay paperwork foodstamp prepaid doctor tax charity ward let a million flowers bloom

supervision of my family's medical situation, thank you very much

Catastrophic medical insurance is currently illegal in Massachusetts All they had to do is allow

me to purchase what I could get if I lived 50 miles west, which is REAL LIVE INSURANCE,

that is, they would pay if something unexpected, substantial, and expensive happened And it

would cost me a couple hundred bucks a month But no, I have to pay full freight for every

lamebrain thing that every knucklehead who has a job with benefits wants tax free, like gym

memberships and aromatherapy and acupuncture and reiki massage and "mental health," ie,

I'm a miserable failure as a human being and I want to talk to another miserable failure that

went to community college for psychology about it, at great expense Oh, yes, let's not forget all middle age men that need free blue pills because what a mean spirited thing it would be [if]

middle age men didn't wander the earth with extra free hardons

And so "insurance" becomes paying in advance for others to get what they don't need or

deserve, to the point where "Insurance" costs 1200 a month and if something catastrophic did

happen, would bankrupt me anyway, because instead of paying $50 for an office visit for an

imaginary ailment, but having a real catastrophe paid for, the powers that be would prefer

paying $5 dollars copay for an office visit to their yogurt enema wellness healer, but have to

chip in 20% for cancer therapy, which would bankrupt anybody that has to worry about the

cost of health insurance in the first place

ROFL I too am a big believer in catastrophic health insurance My home insurance does not cover broken

light bulbs and leaky plumbing My car insurance does not cover air filters Why does my health

insurance have to cover routine stuff? I pay for my own health care and this is exactly how my family handles both dental and medical: We pay regular visits but have catastrophic coverage for major health breakdowns

Jeez, I wish I had written that email and could take credit for it The blog does not reveal the emailer's identity, but whoever you are you're welcome to guest blog here any time

Update: About a year ago, my family of four was quoted about $650 a month for the type of full (not

catastrophic) medical insurance that the state of Mass is requiring This is about $8000 a year This strikes

me as by far the most expensive item that any US government has required its citizens to purchase, and

given the average GDP of most nations, may be the most expensive item any government in history has required all of its citizens to purchase Up to this point, many municipalities have shied away from requiring purchase

of $40 smoke detectors The only thing that is even within an order of magnitude of this is perhaps car insurance, but even car insurance is not required of every citizen, just the ones with cars (don't laugh, if car insurance laws followed the same logic as this health insurance bill, not having a car would not be a legal excuse for not having auto insurance.)

Update 2: I am sure I will get the response, "but the supporters promise that the bill will halve the cost of

private health insurance Right Here is a clue: Except for the reform plan in California pushed by Gov Arnold, every single state attempt to "reform" workers comp has resulted in my premiums going up I am sure we are all holding our breath for the price drop in passenger rail service and first class mail

This plan removes the last people from the market who are price sensitive shoppers of individual medical services (i.e those who pay expenses out of pocket rather than having them covered by medical

insurance) If you drive down the marginal cost to all consumers to the level of the copay from the much higher true-cost of the procedure, then you are going to get a lot more use of all medical procedures Higher use = higher cost Higher cost = higher premiums, even when spread over more people

I am constantly stunned that this concept has to be explained to people Let's consider a test that costs

$1000 to administer that can detect a very rare type of cancer that only occurs in 1 in 100,000 people Well,

if they charged you anywhere near the $1000 cost, few people would choose to pay for a test to identify something so low-risk But if you could take the test for a $20 copay? Sure doc, let's do it! So the

insurance pool has to fork over $1000 for a procedure that you might only value at $20 Also see this post for more along the same lines And here too

Posted on April 7, 2006 at 04:42 PM

Don't Fix Immigration, Fix the Welfare State

Brian Doherty of Reason observes:

The solution to the legal crisis immigration represents won't come through immigration law

itself, which again and again has proven itself useless at fully stemming the irresistible tides of

human desire for a better life No matter how much money is spent or how the law is jiggered,

it is not immigration policy that has created unnecessary tears and strains in America's social

order Rather, the welfare state is at the root of any legitimate claim that immigration (legal or

illegal) is an assault on the American nation (There are plenty of illegitimate complaints, based

merely on distaste for the often-imaginary hell of running into Spanish-speaking people in to-day life or seeing some flag not of your nation, but such complaints are not worthy of

day-consideration.)

The free market, as it usually does, has created a system of mutually satisfactory

interdependence, all of us serving each other and helping each other get what we want The

welfare state, in all its manifestations from medical care to schooling to pure giveaways, creates

a negative sum game in which resources are forcibly redistributed making some a problem, or

a perceived potential problem, to others, and allowing demagogues to obsess over precious

"public" resources scarfed up by the invading Other

As long as that system is around to breed resentment and anger—as well as

counter-resentment and counter-anger such as that seen in the streets of L.A of late—immigration will continue as a political crisis, no matter how many repeat cycles of jiggering with immigration

law, or protesting it, we go through

California's Proposition 187, attempting to limit the provision of government services to illegal immigrants, was indeed, whatever the motives of its supporters, in spirit on the right track to a world where any immigrant ought to be, and can be, welcome; one where they are pure

contributors at the same time to their own well-being and to everyone else's as well It's the

only permanent and just solution to the immigration conundrum But it involves a significant

reduction in federal power, money, and authority, rather than an expansion of it Strangely, it's

a no-go in today's Washington

I wrote a similar essay on how the New Deal changed our views on immigration

Posted on April 8, 2006 at 08:15 AM

My Worst Vendor Guess Who?

Every small business probably has stories about vendors who are particularly difficult to work with Let

me describe my most difficult and irritating vendor, someone who sells me products that we resell in our stores:

• Most vendors try to set your retail price for you, but are seldom successful Only in countries like Germany that make retail discounting illegal are such attempts universally successful However, this one vendor is always successful at setting my retail price

• Most vendors allow me a retail gross margin of at least 30-50% of sales to help me to make money

on the sale of their product They like me to make money, since that gives me the incentive to sell more of their product However, this one particular vendor only allows me a 5% gross margin Ironically, this products is on of the most difficult and time-consuming for our stores to sell,

requiring ten minutes of sales time to gather all the necessary customer information and complete the transaction Every single one we sell is a dead loss to us

• Every small business has some vendors it struggles with on credit terms I usually have to fill out a detailed credit application, and as the owner have to personally guarantee the company's payment

on the account Sometimes vendors will require a few orders be consummated COD so we can develop a history before they will go to a 30-day invoicing approach However, this particular vendor goes even further I had to set up a dedicated bank account into which I deposit funds for

this vendors products every week In addition, I had to obtain a $4000 bond to cover any

non-payment in the account, and I have to hold the bond as long as I want to do business with this vendor in other words, there is no credit given for a long track record of performance on the account

• This particular vendor has an "in" with the State of Colorado, which protects it by allowing no other competitive product to be sold in the state

Give up? Well, most of you have probably guessed that this vendor is the government! Or specifically,

the Colorado Department of Wildlife and the specific product discussed is fishing licenses That is why this particular vendor can get away with practices that no company that actually has to compete in the market place would ever attempt, and, in a couple of cases, gets aways with practices that would be illegal for a private company.

When I bought this company, we used to sell fishing licenses at many of our locations I have pared this down to only the bare minimum number of locations, like marinas, where customers absolutely expect me

to be able to sell them a license

Posted on April 8, 2006 at 08:36 AM

Maybe It's Just Too Complicated

The US Congress is considering a federal licensing requirement for all paid tax preparers Apparently, even most paid preparers can't get the returns correct:

The senators heard from investigators at the Government Accountability Office, who found

mistakes in virtually every tax return filled out by commercial chain preparers The

investigators said they looked at a tiny number of tax returns, and that their conclusions could not be generalized to the rest of the tax preparation industry

You know why? Because I would bet you that the same amount of scrutiny could find errors in every single return submitted There is just no way to get it all right How about, you know, actually spending some time in Congress making the return easy enough that individuals don't feel the need to seek out paid preparers Of course, the real reason for this initiative is that higher-dollar CPA firms and large accounting firms would like Congress to sit on its low-price competition (note that only chain-type firms were

investigated) As Milton Freedman pointed out long ago about licensing:

The justification offered is always the same: to protect the consumer However, the reason is

demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for the imposition or

strengthening of licensure The lobbyists are invariably representatives of the occupation in

question rather than of the customers True enough, plumbers presumably know better than

anyone else what their customers need to be protected against However, it is hard to regard

altruistic concern for their customers as the primary motive behind their determined efforts to

get legal power to decide who may be a plumber

Of course, the last paragraph of the article demonstrates there is already a solution in place for poor tax preparer service:

Had the IRS found these problems on real returns, many preparers would have been subject to penalties for negligence and willful or reckless disregard of tax rules

So why is licensing needed at all?

Posted on April 11, 2006 at 09:14 AM

Punish the Victims

In Florida, where there seems to be a substantial problem with people stealing property in the form of shopping carts from local merchants, the government has a solution: Fine the victims

In theory, stealing a shopping cart is punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine But

police rarely catch anyone in the act

So local governments across the state are tackling the battle in other ways, typically requiring

stores to keep carts in the parking lot or pay a fine

Hallandale Beach recently updated its laws requiring stores to create plans for keeping carts on their property Stores bigger than 35,000 square feet, about the size of many grocery stores, can

be required to install theft-prevention devices Installation costs $20,000 to $30,000, Miller

Limiting Free Speech Unifies Congress

Anyone who actually believed that McCain-Feingold was about cleaning up politics rather than just

protecting incumbent political jobs can now disabuse themselves of that notion It has become clear that election finance laws are pure Machiavellian politics, passed by those who think it will work to their

benefit (ie help them in the next election) and opposed by those who think they will be hurt by it Principle almost never plays a part any more

On April 5, House Republicans voted to limit the speech of 527 groups, who up until now were exempt from McCain-Feingold speech restrictions Republicans generally supported the restrictions, despite years

of saying that money does not tarnish politics, because, well because Democrats were better last election than Republicans at raising money via 527's Democrats, who historically as a party have supported

campaign finance and speech restrictions and eagerly voted for McCain-Feingold, oppose the legislation for no principled reason except that 527's are working for them Democrats will therefore likely prevent this bill from passing the Senate

George Will has a nice column lambasting the Republican Congress:

If in November Republicans lose control of the House of Representatives, April 5 should be

remembered as the day they demonstrated that they earned defeat Traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism, they used their power for their only remaining purpose to cling

to power Their vote to restrict freedom of speech came just as the GOP's conservative base is

coming to the conclusion that House Republicans are not worth working for in October or

venturing out to vote for in November

The "problem" Republicans addressed is that in 2004 Democrats were more successful than

Republicans in using so-called 527 organizations advocacy groups named after the tax code

provision governing them In 2002 Congress passed the McCain-Feingold legislation banning

large "soft money" contributions for parties money for issue-advocacy and organizational

activities, not for candidates In 2004, to the surprise of no sensible person and most

McCain-Feingold supporters, much of the money especially huge contributions from rich liberals

was diverted to 527s So on April 5, House Republicans, easily jettisoning what little remains of their ballast of belief in freedom and limited government, voted to severely limit the amounts

that can be given to 527s

He captures a priceless quote that gets at the heart of why Congressional incumbents love these campaign finance laws:

Candice Miller (R-Mich.) said that restricting 527s would combat "nauseating ugliness,

negativity and hyperpartisanship." Oh, so that is what the First Amendment means: Congress

shall make no law abridging freedom of speech unless speech annoys politicians

Props, by the way, to my Representative John Shadegg for his no vote, as well as to my favorite

Congressman Jeff Flake, who voted no as well

Posted on April 16, 2006 at 06:42 PM

I'll Take That Tinfoil Hat Now

I think it was George Carlin (?) who used to ask "Do you know what the worst thing is that can happen when you smoke marijuana?" His answer was "Get sent to prison" The implication, which I have always agreed with for most drug use, was that it is insane as a society to try to save someone from doing

something bad to himself by doing something worse to him

I think of this whenever I get in a discussion about security responses to 9/11 The worst thing that can happen to this country as a whole (as differentiated of course from the individual victims of 9/11) is to turn the country into a police state to combat potential future terrorist actions I personally would greatly prefer to live with a 1 in 100,000 chance of being the victim of terrorism than find myself living in an

America that has abandoned its constitution I wrote more on this topic here

To this end, though I tend to be slow to believe these type of stories, this one (via Reason) about domestic NSA wiretapping is pretty frightening:

AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers'

phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a

secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker

cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company

The source is just one low-level guy, so this story is still pretty soft I hope the investigation is allowed to play out

Posted on April 16, 2006 at 07:01 PM

Great Example of Zero-Sum Thinking

In perhaps the best example I have seen since Paul Ehrlich of zero-sum thinking, junkscience.com links to this article at the BBC:

A study by the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and the Open University says 16 April is the day when the nation goes into "ecological debt" this year

It warns if annual global consumption levels matched the UK's, it would take 3.1 Earths to meet the demand

How many times does this sort of stuff have to be wrong before it stops getting printed by "science writers"

in the media Malthus made the same argument over a century ago, and Ehrlich has been making one bad prediction after another along these lines since the late 60's The report relies on this concept:

The findings are based on the concept of "ecological footprints", a system of measuring how

much land and water a human population needs to produce the resources it consumes and

absorb the resulting waste

Of course, no one mentions that this "ecological footprint" number has changed dramatically with

technology, not only in the last 200 years but even in the last 30 For example, total US Farm acreage has fallen for the last fifty years, while agricultural production has grown between two and five times in the same period Its a stupid, meaningless analysis that says that if nothing else changed, and suddenly consumption went up, there would be a crisis It relies on the lack of imagination of both the authors (and

to an extent, the audience), arguing that since they can't think of any way to grow production any further,

it must not be possible I can just picture these guys as prehistoric man sitting in a cave making the same pronouncements of disaster for the species, all while their peers are busy outside playing with bone tools under the big black monolith

More on the zero-sum fallacy here

Posted on April 17, 2006 at 02:05 PM

The Peak Whale Theory

After reading this article on the earth running out of resources, I discovered another article from the archives of the Coyote Broadsheet, a predecessor of this blog written by one of my distant relatives, dated April 17, 1870:

As the US Population reaches toward the astronomical total of 40 million persons, we are

reaching the limits of the number of people this earth can support If one were to extrapolate

current population growth rates, this country in a hundred years could have over 250 million

people in it! Now of course, that figure is impossible - the farmland of this country couldn't

possibly support even half this number But it is interesting to consider the environmental

consequences

Take the issue of transportation Currently there are over 11 million horses in this country, the feeding and care of which constitute a significant part of our economy A population of 250

million would imply the need for nearly 70 million horses in this country, and this is even

before one considers the fact that "horse intensity", or the average number of horses per family, has been increasing steadily over the last several decades It is not unreasonable, therefore, to

assume that so many people might need 100 million horses to fulfill all their transportation

needs There is just no way this admittedly bountiful nation could support 100 million horses The disposal of their manure alone would create an environmental problem of unprecedented

magnitude

Or, take the case of illuminant As the population grows, the demand for illuminant should

grow at least as quickly However, whale catches and therefore whale oil supply has leveled

off of late, such that many are talking about the "peak whale" phenomena, which refers to the

theory that whale oil production may have already passed its peak 250 million people would

use up the entire supply of the world's whales four or five times over, leaving none for poorer

nations of the world

Too bad Julian Simon wasn't around to make a bet on whale oil prices

Posted on April 18, 2006 at 08:56 AM

Employment Opportunities

The Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute is looking for a Director of Administration and a Director of

Development If you have always wanted to convert your desire for small government into a paying job, this might be your chance From their web site:

The Goldwater Institute was founded in 1988 by a small group of entrepreneurial Arizonans

with the blessing of Sen Barry Goldwater Like our namesake, the Goldwater Institute board

and staff share a belief in the innate dignity of individual human beings, that America is a

nation that grew great through the initiative and ambition of regular men and women, and,

that while the legitimate functions of government are conducive to freedom, unrestrained

government has proved to be a chief instrument in history for thwarting individual liberty

Through research and education, the Goldwater Institute works to broaden the parameters of

policy discussions to allow consideration of policies consistent with the founding principles of free societies

With the legislature introducing thousands of new bills every year, it’s nearly impossible for

the average person to know when or where his liberties are threatened, much less do anything about it The Goldwater Institute works on behalf of Arizonans to keep watch on government

and to expand school choice, restore economic liberty, protect private property, and affirm

Arizona’s independence against unconstitutional federal encroachments

Posted on April 18, 2006 at 09:58 AM

Vioxx and Merck Lose Again

Vioxx went to 3 for 6 in jury verdicts today as Merck lost a case in Texas (WSJ $) Merck got hit with $7 million in damages plus $25 million in punitive damages, presumably since Merck was so clearly at fault

as to be considered to have acted recklessly With that in mind, consider a couple of facts in the case: First, the plaintiff

died of a heart attack after taking Vioxx for less than a month

I know what you are thinking How, after less than a month of use (and maybe as little as a week), could any plaintiff prove their heart attack was from Vioxx? I mean, out of the thousands of people who took Vioxx, some statistically were due for a heart attack even had they not taken the drug Having one event (the heart attack) follow another (Vioxx use) does not prove causation, after all I guess the jury decided that this guy was not at risk for a heart attack otherwise Of course, they admitted that:

Mr Garza, a Vietnam veteran who was 71 years old when he died in 2001, had a history of

smoking, had suffered a prior heart attack in 1981 and had quadruple bypass surgery in 1985

But I'm sure that had no bearing on his heart attack It must have been from the week of Vioxx His

lawyers mitigated this by arguing:

he had a stress test shortly before his heart attack that showed he was in good health

Do you know how many men die of heart attacks within months of having a clean stress test? A lot The plaintiffs initially asked for a billion dollars, so I guess if only by comparison the verdict was

reasonable I wrote more about the danger of making uninformed juries the arbiter of what risk trade-offs

we as individuals can take with our medications here and here and here I questioned multiple punitive damage awards for the same offense in the context of double jeopardy here

Posted on April 21, 2006 at 08:22 PM

I'll Try Again Why The Trade Deficit is Not a Debt

After spending gobs of electrons on this post about the US trade deficit explaining why it is not a debt, and

is not even necessarily bad, I got a depressing number of comments and emails like this one:

The trade deficit is a debt We cannot get the dollars back we have spendt unless we export to

get them back It is called an external debt for a reason It is called a current account debto for a reason

Aaaaargh It is depressing that we can get such economic ignorance, particularly in a self-righteous way The crappy media coverage of these issues has people convinced that it just has to be this big old debt out there someone is going to have to repay someday

OK, I will try again But in response to this specific post, it is only called "external debt" or "current

account debt" rather than "deficit" by really, really sloppy media people who have no idea what they are talking about (unfortunately, there are a lot of these) And a deficit is not a debt, though it can sometimes create a debt

I try to be very respectful of my readers I never delete a comment, unless it is spam/bot stuff or in a few cases where commenters have asked me to So it is only with the deepest respect that I say the following:

Please do not bother to comment on this post if a) you do not understand the difference between the federal

government deficit and the trade deficit and/or b) you do not understand the difference between an account deficit and

a debt Seriously Just take my word for it that you need to educate yourself a bit first, and then feel free to

leap into the debate (Update: This was a poor tone to adopt, see here)

First, A Thought Experiment

This is not meant to constitute proof, but for those who are concerned that the trade deficit is potentially disastrous for our economy, I can only ask, When? Because we have been running a substantial trade deficit as a nation for over a quarter of a century, and by all accounts, over that same time period, we have had just about the strongest economy in the world In fact, I would propose that the causation is more likely just the reverse Because we have had a strong economy, with extraordinary wealth creation, we have taken some of that wealth and spent it on goods from other nations And because we have the safest nation in the world in which to invest, demand for our local investments tends to shift exchange rates in a way that increase the trade deficit

In the late 80's and early 90's, everyone was in a panic about Japan We were running a massive trade imbalance with Japan They were going to buy all of our real estate Their government was tipping the scales in their own favor They were purposefully depressing the yen to encourage exports Blah, blah, etc, etc And you know what happened? They subsequently went into a decade and a half long recession they are only just now climbing out of, and we had one of the strongest economies in history

How do the Dollars Get Back?

With a couple of exceptions that don't really change our conclusions, dollars do follow a closed loop In other words, if we send them to China or India, they generally eventually come back The question is how To understand this, it is first important to understand that the balance of trade deficit only measures some monetary flows In particular, it looks at the balance between manufactured goods traveling

between two countries If the US has a $20 billion trade deficit with China, it means that they shipped $20 billion more of manufactured goods to us than we shipped back to them It includes some but not all services It does not include goods or securities or investments purchased by foreigners that remain on US soil

To understand how the dollars come back from China in a closed loop is to, in a sense, ask the question of what monetary flows are not included in the trade deficit If we have a trade deficit with China, there are a number of things it can do with its extra dollars:

1 It can do nothing with them - just hold them in a big pile

2 It can lend the money to people buying their products

3 It can buy certain US services

4 It can buy US goods, but not take them out of the US

5 It can buy US public and private securities and real estate

Lets look at each in turn

1 China can do nothing with them - just hold them in a big pile

Two words: In-Sane By just holding them, they would effectively be sticking them in a mattress and foregoing any interest or investment income It's just not going to happen And don't say, well they could just put the dollars in a Chinese bank Fine, but the only way the Chinese bank is going to pay interest on

dollars in the bank is if they turn around and invest the dollars in dollar-denominated investments One way or the other, the money, if it does not buy anything else, will get invested, which we will deal with in point 5.

I know there are paranoiacs that worry that the Chinese, despite the financial disincentives, will hold these dollars anyway in a big vault or something out of spite Gee, hurt me, hurt me Holding our dollars in a big mattress in Peking does nothing to hurt us And dumping them all on the market simultaneously may sound scary to conspiracy theorists, but in practice it would hurt them worse than it would hurt us, and the pain would be relatively short-lived (just ask the Hunt brothers about this strategy)

2 China can lend the money to people buying their products

I suppose that for those who don't get the federal deficit and the trade deficit mixed up, this is what they assume is happening, that Americans are borrowing from the Chinese to finance manufactured goods purchases The only problem is that it is not happening, at least to a greater extent than any normal

purchase-financing arrangements Take corporations such as Wal-mart, a huge buyer of Chinese stuff Is Wal-Mart going into debt to buy Chinese stuff? No, and certainly not to the Chinese

Well, are individual Americans going into debt to buy Chinese Maybe, but the key point is that they are not going into debt because what they are buying is Chinese They are going into debt because Americans, for whatever reason good or bad, are saving less and choosing to buy more on credit This would be happening if what they were buying was Chinese or American made In other words, American

consumers may have debt, but that debt would exist even if we had no trade deficit with China It is a personal choice people are making that has no relation to the source of goods

3 China can buy certain US services

Note that many US services are not included in the trade deficit calculations If Chinese companies engage McKinsey & Co consultants in the US to figure out how to sell more stuff to Wal-mart, those payments for services are probably bringing dollars back to the US from China, but aren't included in the trade

calculations This really is just a subset of point four:

4 China can buy US goods, but not take them out of the US

Many, many of the dollars the Chinese end up with come back to us in this way As did many of the dollars the Japanese had in the eighties If a Chinese company uses dollars not to buy US goods and take them back to China, but buy them and consume them in the US, then this does not show up in the trade numbers Chinese and Japanese companies bring their US dollars to the US to build factories and

infrastructure This is sometimes why it is said that the trade deficit is not a measure of differences in cash flows, but of a difference in where goods are consumed

If you flip the equation around, the Chinese have a wicked balance of stuff deficit They are sending a lot more manufactured goods to the US than they get back I could argue that Chinese workers are getting hosed, since they only get to enjoy a fraction of the goods they produce for themselves, since a large

portion of the product of their labor is sent overseas for others to enjoy Hmmm, doesn't sound so bad that way

5 China can buy US public and private securities and real estate

Of course, what happens with a lot of the US dollars the Chinese find themselves with is that these dollars get invested in US investment vehicles, from real estate to government bonds to private equities There are

several points that need to be made here:

a Just Because Chinese invest in US Government Bonds does not make them or the balance of trade responsible for this debt

As I intimated above, a lot of people get the US federal budget deficit confused with the trade deficit Making this confusion worse, the Chinese use a lot of the dollars they earn in trade to buy US Government Bonds that help finance the federal budget deficit Now, by buying a lot of government bonds, one might argue that the Chinese lower interest rates and make government borrowing easier, thus making the federal budget deficit worse since there is a ready source of debt financing

While there may be a link here, it is tenuous at best If the government was a private company, then its borrowing level might rationally fluctuate up and down based on interest rates and capital availability But the US Government is not this rational It runs a budget deficit primarily because legislators and bureaucrats alike have the incentive to spend other people's money to protect their jobs and power base This happens equally at 3% interest rates and 9% interest rates It happens equally if guys from Peking or Omaha are buying government bonds In fact, one could argue that Chinese reinvestment of their trade dollars in US securities actually marginally reduces the government debt by reducing interest costs

This same argument holds equally true for Chinese investments in private debt Chinese dollars may increase borrowing slightly, but only because the influx of their cash reduces borrowing costs

b Chinese Ownership of US Assets is GOOD

In the Japanese scare of the 1980's, everyone was freaked out that the Japanese were buying up American assets and real estate During that time, while I almost never play the race card, it was almost impossible not to come to the conclusion that some racism had to be involved in this fear America had welcomed, in fact, had prospered, via foreign investment for years For a century, the US has been the safest place for foreigners to put their money,something we should be proud of A sign of strength, not weakness

But suddenly, everything was different because the new buyers were Japanese Note the following:

Despite the notoriety of Japanese investors, the British have the largest U.S direct investment

holding—with the Dutch not far behind—as has been the case since colonial times In 1990 the

United Kingdom held about 27 percent of foreign direct investment in the United States,

significantly greater than Japan's 21 percent The European Economic Community (EC)

collectively holds about 57 percent Moreover, according to research by Eric Rosengren,

between 1978 and 1987, Japanese investors acquired only 94 U.S companies, putting them fifth behind the British (640), Canadians (435), Germans (150), and French (113)

But no one was complaining about the British, Canadians, Germans, or French Only the Japanese I have

to come to the conclusion that there was some racism involved, with the same primal fears at work that caused us to ship US citizens of Japanese decent off to concentration camps in WWII but we did not do the same of citizens of German or Italian decent And in this case, it could not have been security concerns Since 1945, Japan is one of the most pacifistic nations in the world- we probably face a bigger security threat from Belgium than we do from Japan

I get the same feeling today with the China panic that I did twenty years ago with Japan Its a race and a culture we don't understand well, so we get xenophobic People lament that China is a real security threat, and that certainly is true to an extent But ask yourself this - Is China more or less of a threat to hurt us if their economy, their financial prosperity, and most of their assets are tied to the US? Is China more or less

stable now that their people are not starving and they are rapidly developing the largest middle class in the world?

Conclusion

If you are still having trouble understanding, the problem may be that you insist on thinking of economics

as zero-sum This is the fallacy of 18th century mercantilists, who saw the economy as a big fixed tank, and

if more flowed overseas than flowed back, the tank level would fall until the country was bankrupt There are at least two key fallacies here:

1 Wealth is not zero-sum It is created It is expanded Some can even be spent frivolously on big ass plasma TV's from China and we are still wealthier than we were decades ago

2 Trading has value in both directions As mentioned above, looking at only the currency side of trading misses a lot By definition, in a free trade, both sides believe the trade increases the value to themselves, or they would not have made the trade So trading per se, no matter what the currency flows, can only lead to wealth creation, not its destruction

Postscript - New Mercantilism

Lamenting the trade deficit is always a precursor to interfering with free trade It is important to note that free trade has always led to prosperity, while protectionism has always led to stagnation

Several protectionists today are trying to make the argument that OK, that might have been true in the past, but today is different, and today, free trade is uniquely bad Economist Paul Craig Roberts made this argument, that, as Don Boudreaux summarizes it:

the American standard of living is threatened by the world's growing prosperity, improved

education, better governance, and greater fluidity of capital and resources to move in search of higher returns

Boudreaux, a writer at the fabulous Cafe Hayek, does a good fisking of this argument, but I think I can demolish it even faster By this logic, California would be better off if the eastern part of the US was

suddenly impoverished and made educationally backwards This is absurd Sure, the industrial east suffered some temporary dislocations as the south modernized and competed for factories But this was only temporarily As the south got richer, it wasn't a contest between regions for a fixed number of

factories, the number of factories and jobs grew, so that all parts of the country had more

Is there anyone who thinks that half of the US would be better off economically if the other half were turned into a third world nation? Is there any company executive that thinks they could survive if half their market went away? So why is half the world better off if the other half is impoverished? If you are saying, gee, the only reason I can come up with is that zero-sum fallacy Coyote keeps talking about, go to the head of the class

Update: In comments and emails, my readership educates me that citizens of German and Italian decent

were interned in WWII as well While I knew that Germans and Italian POW's were interned in large numbers in the US in WWII, I was not aware of internship of US citizens with German or Italian blood, though the programs for these nationals do seem more limited than the west coast movement of

Americans of Japanese decent My first and second generation German immigrant family members never reported being harassed in any way, either publicly or privately, during the war and most all served either

in the US military or war production industries I will still stick by my core point that investment in the US

by Asian nationals is not treated the same as investment by European or Canadian nationals

I have also gotten a number of emails and comments on the differences between various trade and current account deficit indicators I tried to avoid getting into all that, assuming, I think rightly, that it would just clutter up the argument and would not substantially affect the conclusion Just for the record, though, there are many different metrics, that range from narrow measures of manufactured goods flows to much broader measures of capital and services flow You can assume that 90% of the time, the media article you are reading about the deficit probably does not correctly describe the metric it is using.

Posted on April 21, 2006 at 09:19 PM

Some Updates, and an Apology

I have been stuck in rural Colorado a few days, my stay extended by a pretty good spring snowstorm up in the high country I was visiting our new Colorado marina Finally getting to the airport, I found a backlog

of unapproved comments, which I have passed through in mass Sorry for the delay, but blame bots I hate having to approve comments to filter spam as much as you must hate the delay in seing your comments appear

spam-The other day in this post I, for the first and last time, wrote that my commenters needed to educate

themselves I knew this was a stupid thing to write, leading with my chin, as it were I have posted all kinds of dumb stuff, and a number of things that I have been informed were outright errors (see the update

to that same post, for example) My commenters are great and often more knowlegeable than I am, so it was a dumb tone to adopt My only excuse is that I had about 5 emails in a row that confused the trade deficit with the federal budget deficit and the national debt, and I was ready to scream

I'm sorry

Posted on April 25, 2006 at 11:17 AM

Gas Prices a Crisis??

The media is just longing to make current gas prices into a crisis And you can already see them gearing up

to bash oil companies for "record" profits (by the way, when reading the profit announcements, pay

attention not to just total dollars but to profit margins, then read this)

Glenn Reynolds links this gas price chart this morning at Random Useless Data, showing that in real terms, gas prices are still below their peaks, and not at "all-time highs."

I took this one step further, based on the assumption that it isn't the price per gallon that matters for gas, but the price to drive a fixed mileage, say 100 miles Since average automobile fuel economy has continued

to improve, in real terms we are far below the peak cost of gasoline Using this and this MPG data (for passenger cars) and the inflation adjusted gas prices here, I got this chart (1979 dollars)

By the way, just so you know my personal incentives, there are very few people out there who run a business whose fortunes are more sensitive to gas prices than my recreation business This will not be a very good summer for me, but if we leave the market alone to do its work, things will likely be better in

2007 Intervention by Congress will pretty much assure that things will get worse

Posted on April 26, 2006 at 09:14 AM

Disturbing Trade News From China

The following is from our Chinese sister publication called Panda Blog:

Our Chinese government continues to pursue a policy of export promotion, patting itself on the back for its trade surplus in manufactured goods with the United States The Chinese government does so

through a number of avenues, including:

• Limiting yuan convertibility, and keeping the yuan's value artificially low

• Imposing strict capital controls that limit dollar reinvestment to low-yield securities like US

government T-bills

• Selling exports below cost and well below domestic prices (what the Americans call "dumping") and subsidizing products for export

It is important to note that each and every one of these government interventions subsidizes US citizens and consumers at the expense of Chinese citizens and consumers A low yuan makes Chinese products

cheap for Americans but makes imports relatively dear for Chinese So-called "dumping" represents an even clearer direct subsidy of American consumers over their Chinese counterparts And limiting

foreign exchange re-investments to low-yield government bonds has acted as a direct subsidy of

American taxpayers and the American government, saddling China with extraordinarily low yields on

our nearly $1 trillion in foreign exchange Every single step China takes to promote exports is in effect

a subsidy of American consumers by Chinese citizens.

This policy of raping the domestic market in pursuit of exports and trade surpluses was one that Japan

followed in the seventies and eighties It sacrificed its own consumers, protecting local producers in the domestic market while subsidizing exports Japanese consumers had to live with some of the highest

prices in the world, so that Americans could get some of the lowest prices on those same goods Japanese customers endured limited product choices and a horrendously outdated retail sector that were all

protected by government regulation, all in the name of creating trade surpluses And surpluses they did create Japan achieved massive trade surpluses with the US, and built the largest accumulation of

foreign exchange (mostly dollars) in the world And what did this get them? Fifteen years of recession, from which the country is only now emerging, while the US economy happily continued to grow and

create wealth in astonishing proportions, seemingly unaware that is was supposed to have been

"defeated" by Japan.

We at Panda Blog believe it is insane for our Chinese government to continue to chase the chimera of

ever-growing foreign exchange and trade surpluses These achieved nothing lasting for Japan and they

will achieve nothing for China In fact, the only thing that amazes us more than China's

subsidize-Americans strategy is that the subsidize-Americans seem to complain about it so much They complain about their trade deficits, which are nothing more than a reflection of their incredible wealth They complain about

the yuan exchange rate, which is set today to give discounts to Americans and price premiums to

Chinese They complain about China buying their government bonds, which does nothing more than

reduce the costs of their Congress's insane deficit spending They even complain about dumping, which

is nothing more than a direct subsidy by China of lower prices for American consumers.

And, incredibly, the Americans complain that it is they that run a security risk with their current trade deficit with China! This claim is so crazy, we at Panda Blog have come to the conclusion that it must be the result of a misdirection campaign by CIA-controlled American media After all, the fact that China

exports more to the US than the US does to China means that by definition, more of China's economic

production is dependent on the well-being of the American economy than vice-versa And, with nearly a trillion dollars in foreign exchange invested heavily in US government bonds, it is China that has the

most riding on the continued stability of the American government, rather than the reverse American

commentators invent scenarios where the Chinese could hurt the American economy, which we could,

but only at the cost of hurting ourselves worse Mutual Assured Destruction is alive and well, but

today it is not just a feature of nuclear strategy but a fact of the global economy.

Panda Blog goes on to ask that their government end these distorting policies, for the sake of China's future I for one kindof hope that they keep subsidizing the stuff I buy over at Wal-mart

Posted on April 26, 2006 at 10:44 PM

I May Offer a Libertarian Summer Internship

Over the last month, blogging has been both light and of lower-quality than I would like because I have been consumed with some growth opportunities in my business Frequent readers will know that much of

my effort has not been business per se, but completing all the government waste paper needed to start a new business in a new state or industry A partial list of some of these tasks are here and here

I am thinking next summer I may go on campus and find the strongest big government supporter I can find and hire them to do all this government paperwork my attempt to create one new libertarian each year Not sure how I would find the right person, though approaching local PIRG chapter or Campus Progressives organization might be a good start

PS- What I would really like to do is hire one Congressman a year into that summer job.

Posted on April 26, 2006 at 11:12 PM

The Feeding Frenzy Can Begin

The feeding frenzy that the media has been salivating over for days can begin, now that Exxon-Mobil (XOM) as announced quarterly profits They reported net income of $8.4 billion on $88.98 billion in sales, for a net income margin of 9.4% Previously I observed that 9.4% for a peak profit in a cyclical industry is pretty average, and that over the last decade oil company profits have been below average for the whole of

US industry

In fact, most investors found these profits to be disappointing You know you have a fun CEO job when half the country is pounding on you for profits being too high and the other half are pounding on you for profits being too low The fact is that XOM and other large US oil companies don't get the benefit of rising oil prices that they did, say, 40 years ago US oil companies no longer own most of their overseas reserves since many of their foreign operations were nationalized by countries in the 1960s (with the US

government refusing to lift a finger to protect these US assets, one of the early instances of the for-Exxon argument) Today, XOM must pay near market rate for much of this crude, either in arms-length purchases or through royalty agreements stacked in the favor of local governments

no-blood-So what can you folks who are screaming about high gas prices and obscene oil company profits do? Well, you could tax all these "windfall" profits away, like Ford and Carter did in the late 1970s Of course, you

would still be paying $3 for gas, but the profits would go to the US Congress to spend, who I am sure will

do an excellent job Probably could pay for another bridge in Alaska Or, you could somehow ban oil companies from making a profit, and drop gas prices by that 9.4%, or about 28 cents This would get you

$2.72 gas instead of $3.00 gas Feel better? Of course, in either scenario, oil companies would stop making any investments in refining or oil exploration Supplies would quickly begin to fall (I won't go into it now, but take my word for it that refineries and oil wells require constant reinvestment just to keep running at current capacity) and I would bet it would take less than a year for that 28 cents to be right back in gas prices due to shrinking supply

OK, what else could we do? Well, we could cap gas prices Which is a fabulous idea, as long as no one who drives a car has anything better to do than sit in lines all day Or, we could regulate oil like we do telephones and electric utilities Highly regulated electric utilities make a net income margin of 7.1% If

we regulated oil companies down to 7.1%, then this would reduce gas prices from $3.00 to $2.93 So a huge

and inflexible and costly national regulatory structure would save about 7 cents a gallon Oh, and since for most of 10 years oil company profits have been less than 7.1%, then, a utility type regulatory environment would likely raise gas prices and profits in most years And of course you would get all the business

flexibility, creativity, and customer service currently demonstrated by your local electric and phone

company

So what government action should a irate gasoline customer demand? Well, I know this answer goes against years of education that the role of government is to step in and take over when any little aspect of life is not quite what citizens want it to be, but the correct answer is "none" Its like the line from

Wargames: "A strange game The only winning move is not to play."

More on why gas prices are still well below their historic peaks here

May, 2006

Office Move Complete

Wow, was that a hassle I just finished moving my corporate office Hopefully, now that everything is hooked up again, blogging can resume

Update: And per the comment, yes I did throw a bunch away, but it is still staggering how much waste

paper we have to keep for the government for 3 to 5 to 7 years For example, I just got an audit from bureaucracy hell Mono County, California, which wants all my detailed customer campground check-in logs from three and a half years ago

Posted on May 2, 2006 at 07:17 AM

More Suing Bloggers

I am seriously late on this one, but I still want to show my support for Lance Dutson, author of the Main Web Report, who is being sued by an advertising firm and harassed by the state government for

uncovering some really dumb activities at the state tourism board A summary of what he found is here, and the story of the lawsuits is here

This story rings absolutely true with me Given our significant experience with government agencies, I have seen time and time again that when government bureaucrats embark on an activity out of their traditional comfort zones (in this case, Internet pay-per-click advertising, a new activity for most of us) they tend to combine lack of training with total arrogance that they know exactly what they are doing Within my company we have dubbed this "condescending incompetence", and we see it all the time

In this case, Mr Dutson points out that by bidding up the price in Google adwords of travel-related terms, they are actually hurting Maine travel businesses, both by driving up their advertising costs and by

diverting clicks from an actual tourist business to a government site And how could any sensible benefit analysis lead to paying over $15 to get one (1) viewer to the government tourist web site? The answer is, it can't The only thing that can drive this behavior is ignorance combined with a skewed

cost-incentive system (e.g some bureaucrat wanted a line in a performance review or PowerPoint chart that said their web site was top-ranked on every key Google search) And he rightly points out some

disturbing conflicts of interest at the advertising agency, as well as the total bonehead maneuver of putting

an adult phone-sex number in the ad copy

By the way, I despise state tourism agencies Most of the money they spend is a waste and the rest goes to directly benefit a few cronies Most of our local dollars go to high-profile expenditures that gets the

governor some extra media buzz but does zero to get anyone new to the state And note that I run a business that depends 100% on tourism These state expenditures do nothing for me In some cases, my customers pay as high as 12% lodging taxes (e.g tax and bureaucracy hell Mono County, California) to fund tourist boards who don't even advertise the types of operations I run (campgrounds and marinas)

Posted on May 2, 2006 at 10:46 PM

Enron Trial Update

My casual, uninformed observation so far has been that for all of its strong-arm tactics and media

advantage, the government's case so far in the Enron trial has been weaker than I had been led to expect in the media and publicity run-up Tom Kirkendall agrees, and has been all over this case including this recent update

Posted on May 3, 2006 at 08:31 AM

My Immigration Reform Plan

More than any subject on Coyote Blog, my immigration posts have engendered more disapproving

comments than anything else I have written I won't repeat my position except to say that I don't care if immigration is currently illegal, because my point is that it should be legal In short, my stance has been that our rights do not flow from the government but from our basic humanity, and therefore activities like association, employment decision-making, and property purchase should not be contingent on citizenship Its one of those arguments where I wish many on my side of the argument would shut up If the best argument you can muster for immigration is 'who will pick the lettuce', you are not helping very much For the first 150 years of this country's history, our country was basically wide-open to immigration Sure, there were those opposed (the riots in NYC in the 19th century come to mind) but the opposition was confined mainly to xenophobes and those whose job skills were so minimal that unskilled immigrants who could not speak English were perceived as a threat It was only the redistributionist socialism-lite of the New Deal and later the Great Society that began to make unfettered immigration unpopular with a

majority of Americans, who rightly did not wish to see the world's poor migrate to the US seeking an indolent life of living off of government handouts

But, as Congress debates a series of immigration plans that make not sense and don't seem internally consistent, I will propose my own I hope that this plan will appeal to those who to date have opposed immigration because of the government handout problem I am sure it will continue to be unappealing to those who fear competition in the job market or who don't like to be near people who don't speak English very well This is an elaboration of the plan from this post:

1 Anyone may enter or reside in the US The government may prevent entry of a very short list of terrorists and criminals at the border, but everyone else is welcome to come and stay as long as they want for whatever reason Anyone may buy property in the US, regardless or citizenship or

residency Anyone in the US may trade with anyone in the world on the same terms they trade with their next door neighbor

2 The US government is obligated to protect the individual rights, particularly those in the Bill of Rights, of all people physically present in our borders, citizen or not Anyone, regardless of

citizenship status, may buy property, own a business, or seek employment in the United States without any legal distinction vs US "citizens"

3 Certain government functions, including voting and holding office, may require formal

"citizenship" Citizenship should be easier to achieve, based mainly on some minimum residency period, and can be denied after this residency only for a few limited reasons (e.g convicted of a felony) The government may set no quotas or numerical limits on new citizenships

4 All people present in the US pay the same taxes in the same way A non-citizen or even a short

term visitor pays sales taxes on purchases and income taxes on income earned while present in the

US just like anyone else Immigrants will pay property taxes just like long-term residents, either directly or via their rent payments

5 Pure government handouts, like Welfare, food stamps, the EITC, farm subsidies, and public

housing, will only be available to those with full US citizenship Vagrancy and squatting on public

or private lands without permission will not be tolerated

6 Most government services and fee-based activities, including emergency services, public education, transportation, access to public recreation, etc will be open to all people within the US borders, regardless of citizenship status, assuming relevant fees are paid

7 Social Security is a tough beast to classify - I would put it in the "Citizen" category as currently structured (but would gladly put it in the "available to everyone" category if SS could be

restructured to better match contributions with benefits, as in a private account system) But, as currently configured, I would propose that only citizens can accrue and receive SS benefits To equalize the system, the nearly 8% employee and 8% employer social security contributions will still be paid by non-citizens working in the US, but these funds can be distributed differently I would suggest the funds be split 50/50 between state and local governments to offset any

disproportionate use of services by new immigrants The federal portion could go towards social security solvency, while the state and local portion to things like schools and medical programs.With this plan, we return to the America of our founding fathers, welcoming all immigrants who are willing to take the risk of coming here We would end the failed experiment of turning citizenship from a voting right into a comprehensive license that is required to work, own property, or even associate and be present within the US border Since immigrants today who are "illegal" pay no income or social security taxes into the system today (they do pay sales and, via rent, property tax), this plan would increase tax revenues while reducing some welfare state burdens

I think if you asked many prospective immigrants, they would agree to this deal - no handouts, just a fair chance to make a living and a life However, immigrant advocacy organizations are hugely unlikely to accept this plan, as most seem today to have been co-opted by various Marxist organizations who are opposed to anyone opting out of the welfare state (it is no coincidence that the recent immigration policy protests all occurred on May Day, the traditional Soviet-Marxist holiday)

Finally, I would like to offer one thought to all those who worry about "absorbing" ten or fifteen million new immigrants First, I would argue that we have adopted many more immigrants than this successfully

in this country's history, including my grandparents and probably yours Second, I would observe that as recently as the last several decades, we managed to absorb 40 million new workers quite successfully, as I wrote here:

Check this data out, from the BLS:

• In 1968, the unemployment rate was 3.8% 22.9 million women were employed in

non-farm jobs, accounting for 34% of the work force

• In 2000, the unemployment rate was 4.0% 62.7 million women were employed in the

work force, accounting for 48% of the total

• In these years, the number of women employed increased every single year Even in the recession years of 1981-1983 when employment of men dropped by 2.5 million, women gained 400,000 jobs

This is phenomenal After years of being stay-at-home moms or whatever, women in America decided it was time to go to work This was roughly the equivalent of having 40,000,000

immigrants show up on our shores one day looking for work And you know what? The

American economy found jobs for all of them, despite oil embargos and stagflation and wars

and "outsourcing"

Posted on May 3, 2006 at 09:59 AM

One Last Immigration Post

I really wasn't going to post again on immigration - I've said what I have to say and I want to move on before I get too tedious on the subject However, I was reading several conservative blogs over the last several days that had a lot of fun pointing out odd signs and screwball supporters of immigration in the recent immigration marches, as a way to mock the those who support immigration (example here)

I agree that immigration supporters have adopted some fellow travellers that they would do better

without, particularly the hard-core Marxist remnants who not accidently chose the traditional Soviet May Day holiday for their march

Marxist-However, I guess two can play at this game I would like to walk through some of the key points from a recent emailer to this site Below I will address a few of the best passages, but I have included the email in its entirety in the extended post, per the email's instructions Really, I encourage you to read the whole thing Every paragraph is priceless

Being born with our rights is fine, HOWEVER the right to live in a PARTICULAR country within a

FORMED AND STRUCTURED society of laws that protects those rights IS STRICTLY for THE

"CITIZENS" who built that society TO DECIDE who may join them.!

I will call this the nation-as-country-club theory of government Basically he is saying that the US is a big country club where most of us get our memberships by inheritance, and we all get to chose the few new members we take in each year Of all the theories of government, this is, um, cetainly one of them If anything, it reminds me a little of Heinlin in "Starship Troopers" with a society where only those who completed military service are full citizens

This is, however, not the theory of government that our country was built on In fact, we didn't have any real immigration restrictions in this country for over 100 years after the Contitution was passed This model actually has strongly socialist implications I will demonstrate that next

Liberal Democrats AND SO CALLED LIBERTARIANS (who are really

displaced commis) will come to be known as the morons who killed the

goose trying to get the gold faster!!!!

Wow! All along I thought I was a libertarian anarco-capitalist and come to find out I am a displaced commie! Who knew?

Let's take an example Lets say a person from Mexico wants to rent my house and then go to work for me

in my business here in Phoenix I believe that I should be able to rent my house to whomever I want and employ whomever I want without government interferance The emailer presumably believes that the government should be able to dictate who I can and can't rent my property to, and whom I can and can't

employ in my business Who is the real socialist here? I want to let people go wherever they want, and the emailer presumably wants checkpoints demanding to see your paperwork Which model looks more like Soviet Russia?

Recently the Arizona state goverment has discussed making it a crime of trespassing for a foreignor to be found anywhere in Arizona without the proper government paperwork This law would dictate that if I have a such a foreignor on my property, he is trespassing But he has my permission to be on my property,

so how is he trespassing? The only way he can be trespassing is if one assumes that the government, and not me, ultimately own my property

Of course, half the emails I get still say "but they are illegal - they don't have rights." OK, here is my

counter-example Tomorrow, Congress passes a law that says "No one is allowed to criticize any sitting member of Congress for any reason." What would you do? I would run to my blog and immediately start posting "Trent Lott sucks; John McCain sucks; Hillary Clinton sucks" etc etc Why because I still have the right to free speech, even if Congress makes it technically illegal Laws and acts of Congress don't

change rights And if you believe that your rights do flow from Congress, then, well, we better all hold on

because we are screwed

America and the culture it has developed breeds predominantly decent people, these decent people have

died to make America (and the world) a better place to live and little by little the world has learned from

us and has begun to change for the better.

Now very silly people act like all the filth sickeness and desease of the world should be welcomed into

immigration If you really are concerned about preserving America's traditions and culture (assuming

"culture" isn't being used just as a code word to keep non-WASPs out) then I would think you would be strongly pro-immigration Immigration is the norm in this country's history, and the current policies are the aberation If you really want to live in a country where the government actively defines its role as maintaining the country's culture intact, then you should go to France

My family, which came over early in this century, was poor, unskilled, and German What could be worse from a "cultural" standpoint? Surely few could argue that for the period from 1875 to 1945 the Germans had one of the top 3 most destructive cultures in the world Why would we ever want poor unskilled workers from a militaristic totalitarian culture? But my family was accepted none-the-less

By the way, the corruption of our rights and freedoms and government is not coming from the outside - because we already did it to ourselves In our original Constitutional framework, government was

extremely limited and there was little it could do to influence lives In the last 70 years, we have corrupted this framework, trashing Constitutional protections and limitations on government and replacing them with a tyranny of the majority, where 51% can do unto the other 49% in any way they please We shot ourselves in the foot before most any current illegal immigrant was even born

Latinos must be stupid since they dont even have the sense to adopt america!! Illegals still want to be

known as mexicans!!! You know those silly stupid gutless mexicans who allow corruption and filth to be

a way of life in mexico??

We fought and died to eliminate that in America but you want to let it back in here??

Wow, I am getting emails from people who have already died! Anyway, have you ever been to Boston on

St Patricks Day? The Irish still show a lot of pride in their mother country but they still also consider themselves Americans The Irish are a great example Easterners in the 19th century rioted in protest of unskilled Irish immigration, but today they are part of the backbone of that American culture you get so misty-eyed about

Mexican culture and traditions are one of the things that make Arizona great Cinco de Mayo, for example,

is a lot more fun than many of our American holidays and many of us anglos have adopted it in the same way most non-Irish have adopted St Patricks Day I am not particularly religeous, but for you

conservatives out there I will offer that Mexicans are far more religious than your average American

outside of the South

Oh, and by the way, aren't these "stupid, gutless" Mexicans you don't like actually risking life and limb and

arrest to escape the corruption of their home country?

I hope the first victim of a desease from aN ILLEGAL mexican who was never vaccinated is someone you CARE ABOUT!!! jerk!!!!!

Whoa, you say This guy doesn't represent me! Well, I'll tell you I have watched over the last several weeks as conservative blogs have spent a good amount of time picking out the most extreme and

unbalanced immigration supporters and using them to mock the pro-immigration position as a whole Turn about is fair play

Update: I got a second email substantially similar to this one (but with slight variations) from a different

email address today, so this is either copied from another source or part of some campaign It could even

be a mis-direction campaign by immigration supporters, though I doubt it because it is so dead on the tone and content of many other emails and comments I get

As requested in the email, here is the entire email so that you can make sure I have not taken anything out

of context

Hey Coyote, you liberal in sheeps clothing!!!

Tell the people of Sudan you said to use the human rights they

were born with! According to you they have them right now, right??? oR

maybe THose living in north korea can suddenly decide to use the rights

you say they have? They can cherish those rights while relaxing in

their coffins?

YOUR GOD GIVEN RIGHTS MEAN NOTHING UNLESS YOU SET UP A SYSTEM TO

PROTECT AND DEFEND YOUR RIGHTS so you can live long enough to exercise

those rights !!!!

America was built as a sovereign nation of laws by its citizens!!!!

America and its laws will protect those who pledge alliegience to

America and for those who promise to protect and defend America as

those legal citizens who have before them have done!!!!

IT IS UP TO THE CITIZENS of america TO DECIDE WHO WILL JOIN THEM in

this country It was the citizens who built america with our sweat and

lives Big mouths like you have tried to destroy america from Day

one!!!!

The forefathers were smart enough to make sure It is not up to

MORONS with wacko ideas of one world!!!

Its very clear you do not value America as the only decent place to

live on earth or that we are a soveriegn nation ruled by it's free

citizens

Malcontents like you have been trying to DESTROY THAT WHICH GAVE YOU

THE FREEDOM TO SPOUT YOUR TRASH! We wonder why you dont go elsewhere to

say the things you do??

Maybe you dont have the courage??

Being born with our rights is fine, HOWEVER the right to live in a

PARTICULAR country within a FORMED AND STRUCTURED society of laws that

protects those rights IS STRICTLY for THE "CITIZENS" who built that

society TO DECIDE who may join them.!

Open borders would totally destroy the American culture and the

entire world would plunge back to deperate self interest with each and

every human cutting each others throat as they did before america came

on the world wide scene and taught the world about civil rights and

decent treatment of citizens

Like al things that work it came slow but deliberate and it is the

best system so far!!!

What is "american culture" you ask??? American culture is the

combination of learned decency and caring for your fellow man along

with sympathy and self help programs for the needy The American way

of life has civilised Americans beyond that of any other society ever

known to man (to this date)

America led the way throughtout the world removing despots and evil

men like hitler or the murdering islmic fanatics of turkey that killed

every christian Man woman and child who would not convert to Islam in

the 1915 islamic murder spree

America and the culture it has developed breeds predominantly

decent people, these decent people have died to make America (and the

world) a better place to live and little by little the world has

learned from us and has begun to change for the better.

Now very silly people act like all the filth sickeness and desease

of the world should be welcomed into america? No No No!!!!

American society and its culture of law abiding decency must not be

overcome by the selfish unwashed unlawful hordes who would come here

and destroy what has taken so long for so many to build!!!

We can only Assimilate the worlds needy immgrants slowly and build

America sensibly until the Entire world emulates our successful formula

of caring and decency We would never be here unless our forefathers

had created a goverment of the people by the people so your slaps at

our govt is a slap to our forefathers and in reality a slap in your own

face unless you dont vote!!!

Those who advocate open borders will kill america and the paradise

the world knows as America!!!!

Liberal Democrats AND SO CALLED LIBERTARIANS (who are really

displaced commis) will come to be known as the morons who killed the

goose trying to get the gold faster!!!! (the goose I speak of is

America and is like the one who use to lay a golden egg every day or in

this case allows a set number of immagrants in so they may be

assimilated into our american culture of decency

Latinos must be stupid since they dont even have the sense to

adopt america!! Illegals still want to be known as mexicans!!! You

know those silly stupid gutless mexicans who allow corruption and filth

to be a way of life in mexico??

We fought and died to eliminate that in America but you want to let

it back in here??

They must be taught you dont embrace lawlessness, or corruption

They have the biggest most violent gangs but imbeciles like you want to

import them by the boat load?????

DID YOU KNOW THAT HEALTH CARE OFFICIALS HAVE RECENTLY HAD TO ADMITTHERE ARE HUGE UP SPIKES IN THE INCIDENCE OF tb AND OTHER COMUNICABLEDESEASES

No one tells anyone who to worship or vote for, all we ask is they

care about america first but latinos want to stay mexicans and as far

as i am concerned they can stay mexican BUT DO IT IN MEXICO! NOT OUR

AMERICA!!!!