Category Archives: Current Affairs

Why They Assume We’re Stupid

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You ever wonder why politicians and their "strategists" continue to use tactics and schemes that have only the thinnest connection to truth or reality?  I’ll tell you why; it’s because there are enough people ready to believe the BS that it’s worth their while to do it.  In other words, enough of us are dumb or naive enough to believe it that they know they’ll lock up enough votes to make it worth their time and effort to sling this hash.

You wonder what I’m talking about?  Right now the easy examples involve Barack Obama.  It’s not news that some of the Fox-wannabes and Limbaugh lites have been playing with his middle name (Hussein) for effect, or that they’re playing to the xenophobic segment of the population by painting him as some sort of Muslim mole in the supposedly Christian US.  Now some dope has concocted an email that purports to be from syndicated columnist Maureen Dowd and floats all kinds of crazy accusations about Obama’s online fundraising coming mostly from places in the Middle East, like Iran and Saudi Arabia.  The email has been debunked, but I guarantee you that those that want to believe it will, and they will spread it like a virus.

Why do I think this is true?  Because I’ve been in my barbershop and heard a guy say, in all seriousness, that if Obama wins we’ll be kneeling toward Mecca in no time.  I’ve heard, repeatedly, that ours is a Christian nation and that a Muslim should not be elected president.  It’s tempting to argue with people about the accuracy of calling our nation a Christian nation (I think it would be news to the Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, atheist and "other" citizens of the United States), to explain that many of our founding fathers were not Christian (try explaining what a Deist is to someone), but when you get right down to it these folks don’t care.  They are predisposed to believe this crap, and they swallow it whole and then regurgitate it to anyone who will listen.

And no this phenomenon is not unique to the red-meat conservatives.  You can bet that there is and will continue to be plenty of flimsy poop being flung at McCain that the left wingnuts will gladly wallow in and share.  And that my friend is the problem.  Both sides know that we are bored by the "issues", that we’re drawn like moths to a flame to stories that prove that the one we oppose is somehow alien, is not one of us, and thus must be feared and beaten at all costs.  And the media?  They love it because they get to sell advertising, so their job is to simply facilitate the process and highlight the ludicrous.

All of this is nothing new and will continue long after the elections in November.  Thankfully, though, the election will at least end the high political "season" and we can get back to pondering things like Janet Jackson’s nipple.   

I Loves Me a Good Debate on Illegal Immigration

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I thought I got a lot of comments here for my post Random Stop? until I saw the debate that it provoked on the Chatham County BBS (thanks to Esbee for the tip).  The site’s administrator Gene Galin posted my piece on the BB and it provoked a whole bunch of comments, and I think it’s a good debate that provides a look into the various viewpoints on illegal immigration and how we as a society are dealing with it. 

Some of the comments pointed out that I was probably in Alamance County and not Chatham County and I think they’re right.  I’m not real familiar with that area but I do know where I was in relation to I-40 and upon further inspection it does seem I was in Alamance.  The importance of that detail in the overall debate was highlighted in a post by "belle" that references an article in the Raleigh News & Observer pointing out that Alamance County’s sheriff has been involved longer than any other sheriff in North Carolina in the federal program that provides funding for identifying illegal immigrants that have been arrested for other crimes.  Alamance has had 434 illegal immigrants deported, 64 of whom had been arrested for felonies and 302 for traffic stops.

One of the main questions in my original post was whether or not the feds meant for these funds to be used in this way.  Typically the federal government has not looked kindly on state and local agencies infringing on their territory and I was wondering if the folks at ICE would be happy with this kind of operation.

A second issue that I didn’t articulate well, but came out in the comments, is whether or not it’s a good idea to have traffic stops to identify illegal aliens.  The problem is that there are plenty of Hispanic folks in this country who are here legally and it’s not fair to them to be pulled over and have their residency status checked.  The point is that if you’re going to pull over Hispanics to check status, then you should pull over everyone since there are plenty of illegal immigrants from non-Hispanic countries. 

The police routinely set up roadblocks for a variety of reasons.  Drunk driving checkpoints on New Years Eve, checks of inspection stickers, checks of registration, etc.  No one likes them but I think we all understand them and live with them because we’re all subjected to them.  In my original post I wrote that you could very well say that the checkpoint I drove through was set up for that purpose, and maybe it was.  What seemed off to me was that there were lots of cars pulled to the side when we passed and they were all driven by Hispanics.  It also seemed strange that the sheriff barely glanced at my ID, in fact he never even got close enough to take it out of my hand, and that he didn’t appear to look at my stickers or plates.  I suspect that if I hadn’t been a middle aged white guy with a family, but rather had been a middle aged Hispanic guy with a family I would have been scrutinized much more carefully. 

Lots of issues here that are important: illegal immigration, due process, civil rights and state rights among them.  No easy answers, but then there never are for the truly important things in life.

Ready to Sleep

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Well, it looks like my last post, Random Stop?, attracted the most comments I’ve had on a post since I wrote about Ernest Angley.  Writing about a hot-button issue like illegal immigration and wondering aloud if the police were racial profiling at a trafic stop AND getting a link from Esbee will do that.  I haven’t responded to most of the comments because I’ve been working in Chicago since Sunday night and I’m just now getting the chance to sit in front of my computer for the first time since then.  I’m sitting in O’Hare waiting for my flight back to GSO and honestly I’m too tired to respond effectively.  I’ll do it tomorrow when my brain’s a little less fuzzy.

O’Hare’s fun for people-watching but not much else.  The internet connection I paid $6.95 for is agonizingly slow.  The same people who are fun to watch are often also rude, and many smell a little ripe.  Maybe that’s the food court.  Anyway, it’s a nuthouse.  That makes for a great contrast with the GSO terminal, which is so quiet you could hold a meditation session in one of the 80% of gates that aren’t used at any given time. 

Here’s how quiet GSO is.  My flight out on Sunday night was scheduled to take off at 7:50 p.m.  It was delayed an hour so I was hanging out in the little Sam Adams bar near the gates on the United side of the terminal. Tiger was struggling down the back-9 at the US Open and I was enjoying the show with about 10 of my fellow passengers.  Unfortunately the bar shut down at 8:00 (8:00!) so we all had to leave, but luckily the TV was left on while the cleaning crew was doing their thing so we watched through the security gate.  The cleaning crew finished right after Tiger teed off on the 18th and they shut off the TV so we all returned to the gate and a guy did a play-by-play while listening to the broadcast on his iPod.  Classic.

I think we were the last flight out since the approximately 30 people on our flight were the last people in the terminal and the gate agent was so desperate to get rid of us he helped clean the plane when it arrived from some exotic locale, Minneapolis I believe.  I think he had a party to get to. 

I love flying out of GSO, but I wonder how long it can survive with so few passengers.  Normally I’d mark up the experience to an anomaly, but the airport has been this sedate all four years I’ve been using it regularly.  Sadly, it only seems to be getting worse.

Oh well.  No more travel for a while, which is nice.  I’ve met lots of interesting people over the last week and a half, which makes the travel more than bearable, but I’m looking forward to being home for a while.  Not sure if Celeste and the kids feel the same, but they’re stuck with me so I think we’ll all adjust. 

Random Stop?

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Just drove home from a birthday party near Pittsboro, NC. As we were driving north on NC-87 we encountered a road block being manned by sheriff’s deputies and state troopers about 14 miles south of I-40. They were checking everyone’s IDs and either letting them through or pulling them to the shoulder. I thought maybe it was a DUI checkpoint or an effort to nab people whose inspection stickers were expired, but then I noticed that all the cars being pulled over had Hispanic passengers. They also barely looked at my ID before wishing me a nice day and I could swear the deputy never looked at my windshield.

Now I’m wondering if we were in one of the counties mentioned in Sen. Dole’s campaign ad that features sheriff’s praising her for securing funding from a federal program that enables local law enforcement to identify illegal immigrants in their jails and have them deported. I’m not sure, but I don’t think the program allows locals to act like ICE agents and go out and find illegals, rather they are to use it to ID illegals who have already commited a crime.  Well, other than immigrating illegally.

My gut tells me we were seeing an NC version of an immigration sweep and the road block was a pretense to find illegals committing a crime. Me thinks a lot of those cars are going to be found to have broken tail lights or some such thing.

Of course it could just have been a coincidence that all the folks who were pulled over when we passed by were Hispanic. Or that all the Hispanics had some kind of problem with a license, or title, or tags, or stickers or something. And yes there could be some other explanation, but my gut tells me it was a roadblock specifically set up for illegals

Oh, and don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with deporting illegal immigrants (don’t get me started on our screwy immigration system though), but I don’t know if this type of activity would be an appropriate use of the federal funding. Please do correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Feds are pretty territorial about immigration enforcement. I’m thinking they wouldn’t be too happy if they found out that local sheriffs were proactively pursuing illegals

The Anti Book List

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Fec’s done it again.  His list of books he’ll never read is hysterical.  Well, it’s hysterical if you’ve been paying attention to the crapstorm that is the Iraq War and the Bush Administration.  My favorites:

Laura Bush’s My Husband is a Fink

Barbara Bush’s It Should’ve Been Jeb

John McCain’s Retreat With Honor: 100 Years in Iraq

Dick Cheney’s War Crimes Are Your Friend

Doug Feith’s War Crimes for Dummies

Donald Rumsfeld’s War Crimes Illustrated

New Gas Price Report from the JLSI

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The JLSI (Jon Lowder Slob Index) has just released its latest gas price report.  The JLSI report is published whenever I clean out the console between the driver and passenger seats in my wee Saturn compact car.  Since that usually happens every 6-8 months and since I stuff all kinds of receipts in there (gas, fast food drive through, grocery, etc.) it offers a nice glimpse into price movements of gas, burgers and chips over a set period of time.

Here’s what I found in my gas receipts.  All prices are for 87 octane (regular) unleaded from various gas stations:

  • 9/17/07 – Exxon in Lewisville: $2.799/gallon
  • 1/12/08 – Exxon in Lewisville: $3.039/gallon
  • 2/2/08 – Costco in Winston-Salem: $2.899/gallon
  • 4/19/08 – One Stop Shop in Clemmons: $3.479/gallon

Since my car has a 10 gallon tank it cost me $27.99 to fill the tank last September, $30.39 in January, $28.99 in February and $34.79 in mid-April.  Seeing as this is a fancy economic report I need to provide a graph.  Here it is:
Jlsigasindex_2

NIMBY Immigration

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My Mom sent me this article from the Washington Post about the migration of illegal immigrants from the Prince William County, VA school system (the system my kids were in until we moved to Winston-Salem) to the school systems in Fairfax, VA and Arlington, VA.  Last year Prince William County enacted some rules to deny services to illegal immigrants and the result is that many have moved to neighboring counties.

Illegal immigration is obviously a hot-button issue for lots of people.  I find myself coming down in the middle between the open-borders crowd and the "put em all in a boxcar back to wherever they came" crowd.  The way I see it this country was built on immigration and although every immigrant group through the generations, be it the Irish, the Italians or the Asians has endured a level of vehement discrimination, they’ve injected a level of energy and purpose to our country that it’s hard to imagine America without.  So my problem isn’t immigration, it’s illegal immigration.

Now don’t jump to the conclusion that I think the illegal immigrants are bad or evil people.  I imagine they are doing what any number of us would do in their situation; seeking opportunity and a better life for them and their families.  I have to believe that if we somehow found a way to reform our immigration process we could do away with lots of the illegal immigration problems that we deal with.  However, until that bigger problem is solved we do have to deal with illegal immigration and if a community decides to do it by denying government services unless someone can prove legal status then so be it.

Unfortunately we get a lot of what I’d consider intellectually questionable verbiage from mouthpieces on both sides of the illegal immigration issue. The Post story has two quotes that typify to me the intellectual disconnect some of these folks suffer.  First there’s the chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors:

"The resolution is clearly working," said Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
"It is driving down the non-English-speaking portion of the schools and
saving us millions of dollars. They’re going to other jurisdictions and
costing them money."

Stewart called those jurisdictions "sanctuary" cities and counties,
saying illegal immigrants are welcome there. He added: "There is going
to be pressure to enact similar resolutions in those neighboring cities
and counties." Officials from those jurisdictions reject that
assertion.

I don’t dispute that the resolutions are working as some intended, but what’s with calling the other counties sanctuaries?  It makes it sound like they’re putting armed police on the borders to prevent the good folks at ICE from entering and doing their jobs.  Just plain silly.

Then there’s the representative from Mexicans Without Borders:

Immigration advocates also disputed Stewart’s claim that those leaving Prince William are primarily illegal immigrants.

"The majority of our families here were mixed-status families," said Nancy Lyall,
a volunteer with Mexicans Without Borders. "You’re forcing the legal
residents to leave the county as well. And, of course, many of the
children are legal as well, and they’re being forced to leave, too."

Well, duh.  If the parents are illegal and their kids were born here then I guess that gives you a mixed status family.  Note that the county isn’t denying children of illegal immigrants access to the school system, rather they are denying other services to illegal immigrants themselves and instituting background checks for legal status of crime suspects.  Also note that the people are migrating to nearby counties with higher costs of living, yet it appears they feel they need to in order to continue getting county services that cost those counties’ legal taxpayers.  I’m not sure Ms. Lyall is going to win many people over, including those with moderate views, with her arguments.

Before you accuse me of being a heartless bastard let me reiterate that I’m all for a very liberal immigration policy.  I’d like to embrace more immigration, the establishment of a highly proactive system for integrating our new neighbors into our society, and a welcome injection of energy and creativity into our society.  And if someone’s here illegally and they get deathly ill, then by all means give them medical treatment (by law they must get such treatment, even in Prince William) and then a nice comfortable ride home and hopefully they can find a legal way to get back here. 

And to make sure I’m REALLY clear here, I’m not just talking about liberalizing immigration programs for Mexico and Central America.  What about all the displaced people in Iraq who would actually like to emigrate here, although after what we’ve done to their homeland I can’t imagine why?  I think we should embrace them just as we did the Cambodian boat people thirty years ago after the end of the Vietnam War. 

Unfortunately because of the jackasses we’ve put in charge on the Federal level we’ll probably not see workable immigration reform and it will be left to local communities to deal with it themselves, and you’ll begin to see more and more situations like you see in Northern Virginia.  That’s a true shame.

Polyga-Do

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Ed Cone asks why groups that make a religious statement by dressing like folks did in days of yore don’t dress in sandals and robes like they did in Biblical times?  He suspects that they dress as they did at the time of their founding, and I suspect he’s right.

Polygado
But I’ve been thinking along different lines. After seeing all the stories about the polygamist group down in Texas I’ve been wondering how long it would be before someone picks up on the hairstyle of the group’s women and starts marketing the Polyga-Do.  Those things are radical.  Kind of a cross between Princess Leia and the B-52s circa 1984.  Put that on a modern young woman without the prairie dress and I think you have the next wave of punk hairstyle.

Watching Bush’s War

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I’m a huge fan of PBS’s Frontline.  So much so that it’s my top ‘Season Pass’ on Tivo so that I’m sure no other show will preempt it for recording.  Last night PBS aired part 1 of Frontline’s Bush’s War which was duly recorded and I’ve now had the chance to watch about half of the 2 1/2 hour segment.  The quality of the show surpasses even Frontline’s excellent standards and I look forward to watching the rest of it at the earliest opportunity.

If you didn’t see it or get it recorded you can view it online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/

Fec points to a write up in Reuters about the show and excerpts a part that includes this paragraph:

In dozens of interviews and with meticulous fact-gathering, “Frontline”
makes a convincing case for two important aspects of the war. First, it
was primarily orchestrated by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Bush was only “the decider” insofar as he
signed off on their plans, often paying no heed to Secretary of State
Colin Powell and others.

Fec also loaned me Suskind’s The One Percent Doctrine which I’m about halfway through, and when you combine that book with this show you have pretty convincing evidence that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld bent us over and were none too gentle with us.

Da Banking Bidness

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Fec linked to several stories related to potential bank failures in the US. This bit from the US News & World Report really caught my attention:

“It’s our view that regulators are expecting 100 to 200 banks to fail”
over the next 12 to 24 months, says Jaret Seiberg, a research analyst
for the Stanford Group. Seiberg expects those failures to occur
predominantly in states like Ohio, Michigan, California, and
Georgia—where the construction lending market, which includes
residential real estate, is expected to weaken dramatically…

Washington Mutual lost $1.87 billion in the fourth quarter, hit by
mortgage defaults, write-downs and a substantial increase in the amount
it set aside for bad loans.

That got me to thinking about the FDIC.  My understanding is that it insures checking and savings accounts up to $100,000 per depositor and up to $250,000 per IRA account, so if these banks fail won’t it be on the hook to insure all those accounts?  How much moolah are we talking here?

When I set my fingers to typing this post I was going to ask "How much of the taxpayers money is at risk here?" but upon doing a little reading I discovered that the FDIC is funded by insurance payments from the banking institutions themselves.  So unless something catastrophic happens then taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be at risk right?  Something about this sounds spookily familiar.

Oh, yeah.  Right when I was getting out of college and beginning my life in the working world (that would be 1989) there was this little thing called the savings and loan crisis that I didn’t really understand, but seemed to have all the real adults spooked.  It happened to coincide with a real estate bust and a fairly decent recession, and it resulted in the birth of this new institution called Resolution Trust CorporationFrom the Wikipedia entry on RTC comes this: that ended up employing lots of people in DC to do something really important: bailing out the S&Ls and the morons who broke them on the shoals of a booming-busting real estate market.

According to Joseph E. Stiglitz in his book, Towards a New Paradigm in Monetary Economics, page 243, the real reason behind the need of this company was to allow the United States government to subsidize the banking
sector in a way that wasn’t very transparent and therefore avoid the
possible resistance. This is supported by the fact that the banks had
better information related to the loans than the RTC.

So pardon me if I don’t swallow whole the idea that taxpayer dollars may not come to the rescue of the current crop of morons who are breaking their banks on the shoals of the latest booming-busting real estate market.  Somehow the pinstripes always find a way to dump their problems on the denim crowd.

Update: Ed Cone links to an article about the feds getting ready to help out. From the article: The Federal Reserve, struggling to
contain a crisis of confidence in credit markets, plans to lend
up to $200 billion in exchange for mortgage-backed securities…it will hold
auctions of Treasuries in exchange for debt including AAA rated
mortgage securities sold by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and by
banks.  Ed then says, "I’ve made some rotten investments in my lifetime, it
would be nice if someone would swap me some Treasuries for them. "

That didn’t take long.