Amnesty for illegals is not compassion

I run into enough real people who are completely oblivious to what it takes to be a legal alien in the U.S.

I am told illegals are great for the economy because they pay all sorts of taxes, including payroll taxes.

What is the one thing you need to be able to pay, say, payroll taxes? You guessed right: A valid social security number, which, for an alien must be tied to an alien identification number that is authorized to work.

If you've just walked across the border, do you have such a thing?

Most likely, you don't. What do you do? You either buy one that "works" or work for employers who do not file an I-9 and also forget to submit payroll taxes for you. Either way, you are either part of an identity fraud scheme or a tax fraud scheme.

Apparently, requiring that people not engage in identity theft is a huge burden.

Many of the crimes committed by illegals may sound small. However, if a legal alien is caught or suspected of having engaged in such activity, s/he might not be able to become a citizen or be deported for not having "good moral character" which means not only do you have to pay your parking tickets on time, but you are not allowed to forget them in your adjustment of status application.

Most Americans, apparently including the compassionate duo Newt & Rick, seem never to have heard of Form I-693: How many illegals you meet on the street have ever had to be tested for syphilis as a condition of their residence in the U.S.?

There are many reasons for which individuals can be denied entry into the U.S. For example:

In general.-Any alien who, in the opinion of the consular officer at the time of application for a visa, or in the opinion of the Attorney General at the time of application for admission or adjustment of status, is likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible.

Now ask: If you expect to be able to get subsidized college tuition for your child, are you not likely to become a public charge?

How many illegals have submitted Form I-134?

I said before, the U.S. does need real immigration reform, but that cannot happen until real enforcement is in place.

Just for the record, real enforcement does not mean rounding up millions of people and tossing them out.

You do not get caught every time you go three miles above the speed limit, or park too long at a meter.

It is impossible to catch everyone who is in violations of immigration regulations.

That, however, does not mean the law should not be enforced to the fullest extent against those whom you are able to catch, thereby reducing the incentive to flaunt the laws of the U.S. while getting getting free food on the American taxpayers' dime.

Pandering to people who came or stayed illegally in the U.S. is an affront to those of us who tried to comply with every regulation (believe me, there are many) at great economic and psychic cost.

It makes a mockery of the millions of people who would run here at the drop of a hat, work hard, not take welfare, and integrate.

Even if you are a cynical, pandering, lying politician, you should be for real immigration reform: The more people of all skill levels come to the U.S. freely and legally, the more they integrate, the smaller will the influence of one particular group who seems to have created a parallel society in the U.S. to the detriment of all other recent arrivals.

There is no practical or moral obligation to accommodate people whose very first act and many subsequent acts were to break U.S. law. Is it acceptable for a street vendor to set up shop in the middle of a traffic intersection just because he is trying to feed his family? If not, why is it acceptable for him to have walked across the border in violation of U.S. law in the first place?

Why is a turkey called turkey in English?

Given that I am originally from Turkey, one of my least favorite questions I get is why a turkey is called turkey.

If the person asking the question has enjoyed a sufficient quantity of adult beverages beforehand, the question is followed by the punchline 'cause bird that dumb could only have been from Turkey or some such nonsense.

First, let me point the simple fact that the reason European traders were trying to go West and find India was because, to their east, the Ottoman Empire (founded by a Turkish tribe in 1299 and dissolved in 1923), had made it impossible for them to safely travel in the Mediterranean and use the land routes. So, there you go: Native Americans died because of Turkish domination in the Balkans, North Africa and Asia Minor.

Aaaanyyywaaayyy, I digress. Of course, I had no idea why a turkey was called turkey in English whereas the same bird was called hindi (meaning of Indian origin) in Turkish. Very often, when I tried to explain this curiosity, the person asking the question would get all confused, and I would give up.

A few years back, I came across Why A Turkey Is Called A Turkey on NPR. Both theories they present make sense to me. In the final analysis, who knows, and who really cares? Well, apart from the fact that, nowadays, if the question is raised, I can tell a coherent story.

And just to keep this ball rolling…all over the world, people now can eat American Turkeys, but they don't call them Turkeys.

Across Arabia, they call our bird "diiq Hindi," or the "Indian rooster."

In Russia, it's "Indjushka," bird of India.

In Poland, "Inyczka"— again "bird from India."

And what, we wondered, do the Turks call our turkey?

Well, they call it "Hindi," again, short for India.

So in 1492, because Columbus wanted to be in the "Indies," our North American bird got robbed of its American-ness, which is why tonight, when you look down at your turkey, don't call it "sahib."

Call it "dude."

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays: Despite all the shopping silliness that goes on, it is important to be thankful for what we have while we work to improve ourselves.

A weird terrorism arrest in New York City

The announcement of the arrest of Jose Pimentel created more questions than it answered.

The most of which significant seem to be:

1. It looks like the Mayor knew for at least a day about the cases. Why did he show up with a color blindness inducing orange shirt/green sweater (or, was it the other way around) as if he had been just plucked from a field where he was pretending to be a pumpkin?

2. It looks like the NYPD and the City emphasized that Pimentel is one of the many poo-kickers that inhabit NYC and dream of bringing down the Man. I believe he was making the bombs and intended to use them, but why the fanfare?

   Did the mayor and his people think they needed to make up for blaming the Tea Partiers for the Times Square bomb plot?

   Or, do they (probably correctly) believe that there are possibly scores more Pimentels roaming around, building bombs in their mothers' basements waiting for the day they can join their makers?

Whatever the reasons for the bizarre demos, the news conference and subsequent coverage left me the distinct impression that what was said at the announcement was much less significant than what was left unsaid.

Seriously, why could they not wait for the mayor to put on a suit?

A few snapshots from Zuccotti park

I finally got a chance to upload some of my photos from Zucotti Park, before the occupiers were removed, along with a few observations:

The difference between the occupy shanty towns and Tea Party rallies was simple: Whereas the people attending the Tea Parties, showed up in large groups, expressed their opinions and left to go on with their lives, the occupiers chose to be penned in a tiny area, mostly away from the people they wanted to bother, and settled in comfortably. They did not lose when they were removed from the park: They had lost the moment they chose to be penned in and become a tourist attraction.

The only question now is how long is it going to take them to become the violent, foaming in the mouth caricatures of Tea Partiers the media were so happy to draw for us?

Isn't there a Democratic Party Convention coming up? Oh, too bad, it looks like this time, it's going to be in Charlotte.

The problems with Republican candidates

Last night's debate crystallized some of the problems with the people running to become the Republican candidate for the President of the United States.

It is important to keep in mind the fact that the number of Republican debates being televised is an indicator of how desperately we are seeking for solutions and how strongly we believe solutions will come from the Republican field, not the Democrats who are busy shoveling our money into the fire pit as fast as they can. These are commercial enterprises. The reason they keep putting Republicans on TV is because that is a guaranteed way to get them viewers.

That's positive.

It is up to the Republicans to live up to the responsibility they face during this time of crisis induced and sustained by government actions. Had Bernanke and Paulson been level-headed in their handling of a financial crisis by letting Bear Stearns and whoever else was at risk crash and burn, and helped us pick up the pieces afterwards, had there been no TARP, no Stimulus Sr., Stimulus Jr., Son of Stimulus, Bride of Stimulus, had the housing market been allowed to clear, had highway bandit auto companies been allowed to go through regular bankruptcies rather than being "saved" and owned by the government and unions, in short, had markets been allowed to operate, we would not be in this funk right now. We would not be facing increasing threat of all out war & destruction throughout the world. That latter is important: There are a lot of dangerous people in this world, and they tend to do things when they believe we are too weak to respond.

I feel real admiration, respect, gratitude for W, but we ended up in this situation because he did not have the right instincts to be able to stop Bernanke & Paulson from creating an army of chickens with their heads cut off the way he was able to stop the cut'n'run strategy then Senator Obama and his bosses wanted to put in place in Iraq.

In this process, it is important to keep in mind Adam Smith's timeless observation:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Standard economic theory of regulation tells us very clearly that politicians will be all too willing to take from many and give it to the few. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to be resistant to government efforts to support one industry over another or even one firm over another. We must insist that the role of government is to provide a safe and secure environment where free people can trade with each other in peace, even when asking the government to bail out the industry in which we work seems to be in our short term benefit. That is the surest path to a speedy destruction of our economy.

With that in mind, here are some of the problems with Republican candidates.

Cain

I do not know how we would face the world we live in. Where is his foreign policy advice going to come from? What does he think about when and how to project U.S. military power?

Will he be able to shake off a continuous assault on his character in late night show after late night show? Did he really do anything that is worthy of the insults and character assassination attempts he is dealing with right now?

I really liked his response on the China question frankly. Paraphrasing, he pointed out that what is ailing the U.S. economy is what the U.S. government is doing to it.

Just like buying Toyota was not an act of treason, neither is buying Lenovo. In fact, I am typing this on a Lenovo laptop I bought back in 2004 which has served me reliably. God does not have a specific plan for which people will produce which goods and at what price they will trade.

We need someone who understands these basic facts and is willing to explain them.

I have placed a lot of trust in him, and I am afraid of being disappointed.

Romney

I thought Romney would have been a better candidate against Obama than McCain. However, by failing to win against McCain, he proved that he might not have what it takes to win against Obama.

That aside, his China rhetoric is stupid and dangerous. For someone who supposedly understands economics, he seems to completely ignore the fact that Americans cannot be harmed by the Chinese giving them free stuff. We already went through this in the late 70s and the early 80s. Here is Milton Friedman explaining the simple reason we have known to be true for hundreds of years:

Romney is dangerous when he starts talking about intellectual property theft. I get the inkling that he wants to do the bidding of the entertainment industry in the U.S. which has destroyed so much wealth by preventing modern digital industries from flourishing. SOPA is dangerous (note that it means "stick" in Turkish ;-), both to our freedom and our economy.

Perry

I did not know of him before he joined. I feel badly for him every time he speaks. On his worst day, he makes more sense than Obama, but then, that is not hard to do.

Pandering to people who came or stayed illegally in the U.S. is an affront to those of us who tried to comply with every regulation (believe me, there are many) at great economic and psychic cost.

It makes a mockery of the millions of people who would run here at the drop of a hat, work hard, not take welfare, and integrate.

The U.S. does need real immigration reform, but that cannot happen until real enforcement is in place. And, just for the record, real enforcement does not mean rounding up millions of people and tossing them out. Just like you do not get caught every time you go three miles above the speed limit, or park too long at a meter, it would be impossible to catch everyone who is in violations of immigration regulations. That, however, does not mean the law should not be enforced to the fullest extent against those whom you are able to catch, thereby reducing the incentive to flaunt the laws of the U.S. while getting getting free food on the American taxpayers' dime.

Gingrich

Talks about job training programs etc. which sours his otherwise intelligent defense of freedom and markets: Get government out of all education, please. If you are unemployed, and if new training in something else will get you a new job and income, you'll do it. The problem is, so long as you get free money coming for 99 weeks, you don't have any real incentive to try to change anything. Then, you go to a training program for three months, and get another 99 weeks of unemployment "benefits".

Supporting Cast

Bachmann has promise, I do not know why she seems to be stuck. Of course, we don't know what might happen in Iowa.

Johnson and Paul: Please, start living in the world we live in. You can't just shut your years and scream as loudly as you can to ignore that the U.S. is the strongest and wealthiest country in a world inhabited by dangerous people. On the other hand, if you guys want to facilitate a U.S. exit from the U.N., and help the U.N. headquarters move to Kinshasa, I am all for it.

Santorum seems to be angling for a "family values" vice presidential spot to Romney, but I might be wrong.

Did I forget anyone? If I did, it must mean he was forgettable ;-)

How would you feel if someone jumped in front of your car?

Suppose you are driving at 30 mph.

At that speed, if everything else in the universe is properly aligned, you'll be able to stop your car within about 110 ft.

Now, imagine it is night time.

There are a bunch of demonstrators around you, waving sticks, screaming obscenities.

They seem to have focused on you because the car you are driving is not one of the people's car brands (extra bonus karma to you if you can figure that one out.)

You are nervous. There are distractions all around you.

All of a sudden, you see that the light ahead is green, and there is an opening in the sea of people around you.

You try to navigate your way out of there.

The people have not extracted their revenge yet. How dare you?

They jump 10ft in front of you to stop you from leaving.

They have been edumacated in people's schools where their understanding of Newtonian mechanics is all about how it makes them feel to hear this man tell them how the world around them works. How dare he have thought about these things?! It is the imperialism of equations keeping them down.

After all, a rich guy is driving the car.

A car must be able to stop the moment the driver realizes you just jumped right in front of his car. If not, he should have to pay for your decision.

Now, think about how you'd have felt, if you had been driving that night.

Update: I find this quotation by one of the people hit to be priceless: We weren't trying to get in front of the cars. We would have very happily, given the opportunity, stepped out of the way and let him pass by.

Well, she was given the opportunity: The car was on the roadway, not the sidewalk. She had the opportunity to stay on the sidewalk, and not jump in front of a moving car.

Occupiers speak for themselves

Occupiers

Hope they are not coming to your neighborhood ;-)

Does Herman Cain deserve this?

Here is what is actually reported in the Politico story:

The sources … describe episodes that left the women upset and offended. These incidents include conversations allegedly filled with innuendo or personal questions of a sexually suggestive nature, taking place at hotels during conferences, at other officially sanctioned restaurant association events and at the association’s offices. There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship. (emphasis mine)

There are two major incidents in recent memory that gives me pause when I think about the implications of accusations of sexual harassment reported by Politico against Herman Cain.

First, there was the case of the Duke Lacrosse Team. Ultimately, the accusations of rape were found to have been false, but not before the lives of many had been irreversibly altered (and not for the better). During the ordeal, the protestations of innocence by team members were ignored by the prosecutor and a large swath of the media. The second case was even higher profile where Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested to face rape charges. We do not know at this point if Nafissatou Diallo had indeed been raped, but the initially prevailing assumption that this was an open-and-shut case proved not to have been correct.

Both high profile cases illustrate how hard it can be to fight accusations of sexual misconduct because the instinct most of us have is to assume the worst.

Both cases, however, took place in the context of other highly shady behavior: The Duke players had hired strippers for a rowdy party. It was not unimaginable that a bunch of drunk athletes got out of control and did something and assumed that the authorities would take their word over some stripper. In the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the alternative explanation seemed to be that he had procured a quickie from a hotel maid. Again, it was not unimaginable that what might have started as a consensual transaction may have turned into assault (and, to be honest, we can't know what really happened).

OK, back to Herman Cain: We do not know what happened.

The sources told Politico There were also descriptions of physical gestures that were not overtly sexual but that made women who experienced or witnessed them uncomfortable and that they regarded as improper in a professional relationship. (emphasis mine).

In the face of this description, I choose to reserve judgement on what happened.

Now, some commentators have said that it is Mr. Cain's handling of the current Politico story was sub-par. They brought up the fact that he did not immediately hold a press conference with his wife on his side, emphatically denying or presenting explanations of what remains vague accusations.

For that, I remind them of some other politicians who did parade their wives in front of the press in response to allegations of sexual misbehavior: Bill Clinton, Jim McGreevy, and Eliot Spitzer come to mind.