Watching NBR on Mountain Lakes PBS (Vermont PBS doesn’t carry the show, too capitalist) last night, I saw Alan Sloan offered this idea on “Commentary”-Saving Social Security.

Ask any Donk, you’ll hear, since SS isn’t broken, why fix it.

Hope and change are on the way so spend your way to wealth!

401(k) debit draws red flags

A new debit card that lets consumers use ATMs to withdraw money from their 401(k) plans is drawing a sharp reaction from financial planners.

The ReservePlus card is marketed by Reserve Solutions Inc., a New York financial firm that says it has 10,000 cardholders already. [snip]

“For every $10 you take out of the account, you only have $6 or $7 to spend, probably closer to $6, which means you’re giving up a third of your money,” said Stuart Ritter, certified financial planner for T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore asset-management company. “You’re also giving up money to spend in retirement, so you are by definition lowering your lifestyle in retirement.” [snip]

Employees always have been able to take out loans against their 401(k) accounts, but not with ATM cards. The ReservePlus program allows employees to transfer approved loans into online accounts that continue to earn interest. Employees then can withdraw cash from the account at ATMs, up to the maximum approved by their employers. They also can use their debit cards to buy goods and services. [snip]

“The need for individuals to save for retirement has grown over the year due to the uncertainty of Social Security, the shift away from pension plans and the increasing cost of health care,” said Jennifer Engle, spokeswoman for Fidelity Investments, a Boston money manager. [snip]

What’s with this uncertainty with Social Security? All the politicians, including the candidates for President say it is safe; otherwise, they would have fixed any inadequacies long ago. To complete the circle, we need Universal Health Care.

Regardless of the wisdom of waiting, the 401(k) withdrawal rate has been rising recently. [snip]

Besides, the government will protect you from yourself if something goes bump in the night. So feel safe to borrow for what you need/like/want/desire.

Mandated Change

“The way most goods and services become excellent — I mean really excellent — is through competition…How do you think we got from subsistence agriculture to super-cheap food? By mandates?”–Tyler Cowen

In November, the United States may take its strongest lurch to the left since 1933. The Republicans easily could lose 10 seats in the Senate.

The ramifications of this on the free market will be stultifying. The Democrats will not be able to raise taxes to produce more income; the AMT stands in the way of that. All tax increases on the richest 2% will go to covering the losses on the AMT.

They start with a deficit THEY say they can clean up. That means no new spending programs. Compounding their problem is Social Security, which they postulated was in great condition. When those increased obligations start cutting into their other favorite programs, the only choices are spending cuts or add regulations. You‘re aware which way that goes. Unless they chose Pigovian taxes, which must not be called taxes, call them encouragement for the masses.

A type of a Pigovian tax is a “sin tax”, which is a special tax on tobacco products and alcohol.
Such taxes have historically triggered rampant smuggling and flourishing black markets, especially if they create large differences in the price of popular products in neighboring jurisdictions. Critics of sin taxes argue they are regressive in nature and discriminate against the lower classes, since in many jurisdictions they are more likely to be consumers of alcohol and tobacco, more likely to consume a greater quantity of it, and thus are taxed a much greater proportion of their lower income.

Prepare for “instructions” on what light bulbs you may buy; how much health insurance to purchase and from which non-competitive companies with prix fixe premiums. Here is the auto fuel you will like at a price selected by the government.

[snip]
The business sector is going to be increasingly told what to sell and how to sell it. Particularly in health care and energy, firms are going to be accountable to bureaucrats, not to customers. Products and services will be designed in Washington, not by competition.
Regulations and mandates are an alternative to budgetary spending. For example, if politicians do not want to spend money on recruiting a volunteer army, they can institute a draft. Similarly if politicians do not have the resources on budget to pay for universal health insurance, they can pass a law making the purchase of health insurance mandatory. If such a law is effective, then the uninsured will be “drafted” into the army of the insured.

The Massachusetts Model

Consider the Massachusetts health insurance plan. Under the plan, individuals are required by law to purchase health insurance. The type of health insurance that they must by is defined by government regulations. As reported by the Massachusetts Medical Society,

“On March 8, the Commonwealth Connector Board approved seven insurance products for the Commonwealth Choice program, designed to cover uninsured residents who do not qualify for the Connector’s subsidized plans or Commonwealth Care. Below are links to spreadsheets containing the details about premiums, co-pays, and deductibles.”

If you live in Massachusetts and meet the eligibility parameters, you must purchase one of these seven policies. It is illegal for a health insurance company to compete for your business by offering a different policy, such as a policy with a higher deductible or a policy that excludes coverage for some medical procedures.

Private insurance companies still are allowed to conduct business and earn profits in Massachusetts. They are just not allowed to innovate or compete in terms of product offerings.

Regulatory Cost Control

Health care is going to be a tar-baby for government. The more that government grabs, the more it is going to find itself stuck with problems.[snip]

Energy Regulation

Businesses that affect the consumption of energy will also be managed by regulators. We can expect utility de-regulation to be halted and reversed. Alternative fuel mandates and emission controls will be gleefully enacted. [snip]

Labor Regulation

Another objective of the Left is to reduce income inequality. [snip]
…, we can expect to see a raft of new requirements placed on businesses requiring them to offer employees subsidized day care, longer vacations, higher minimum wages, and so forth. [snip]

Read about Germany’s unemployment debacle and the EU situation in general.

Backlash?

Many Americans will welcome the regulatory state. Many others will accomodate it. Only a minority of us will oppose it. Somewhere down the road, as people see the indignity of the many intrusions and the adversity of the consequences, I hope that there will be a backlash. Otherwise, if the era of mandates emerges as I fear it will, then the engine of capitalism in America may run out of the fuel of competition.

All these solutions when applied worked so well. See: Sweden, Soviet Union, Germany, France, Denmark et alia for such successful models.

Think positive, this ’slow motion train wreck’ is good for the U.S.

Yes, America needs a recession. Bernanke and Paulson won’t admit it. And investors hate them. We’re all trapped in outdated 1990s wishful thinking about a “new economy” and “perpetual growth.” [snip]

Let’s focus on 17 benefits from this recession. [snip]

1. Purge the excesses of the housing boom
No, it’s not heartless. Not like wartime calculations of “acceptable collateral damage.” Yes, The Economist admits “the economic and social costs of recession are painful: unemployment, lower wages and profits, and bankruptcy.” [snip]

2. U.S. dollar wake-up call
Reverse the dollar’s free fall and revive our global credibility. [snip]

3. Write-offs
Expose Wall Street’s shadow-banking system. [snip]
A lack of transparency is killing our international credibility. Write it all off, now!

4. Budgeting
Force fiscal restraint back into government. [snip]

5. Overconfidence
A recession will wake up short-term investors playing the market. [snip]

6. Ratings
Rating agencies have massive conflicts of interest; they aren’t doing their job. They’re supposed to represent the investors, but favor Corporate America, which pays for the reports. Shake them up.

7. China
Trigger an internal recession in China. [snip]

8. Oil
Force the energy and auto industries to get serious about emission standards and reducing oil dependency.

9. Inflation
Expose the “core inflation” farce Washington uses to sugarcoat reality.

10. Moral hazard
Slow the Fed from cutting interest rates to bail out speculators.

11. War costs
Force Washington to get honest about how it’s going to pay for our wars, other than supplemental bills that are worse than Enron-style debt financing.

12. CEO pay
Further expose CEO compensation that’s now about five hundred times the salaries of workers, compared with about 40 times a generation ago.

13. Privatization
Stop the privatization of our federal government to no-bid contractors and high-priced mercenary armies fighting our wars.

14. Entitlements
Force Congress to get serious about the coming Social Security/Medicare disaster. [snip]

15. Consumers
Yes, we’re all living way beyond our means, piling up excessive credit-card debt, encouraged by government leaders who tell us “deficits don’t matter.” Recessions will pressure individuals to reduce spending and increase savings.

16. Regulation
Lobbyists have replaced regulation. Extreme theories of unrestrained free trade plus zero regulation just don’t work; [snip]
Get real, folks.

17. Sacrifice
“We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression, says Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. As individuals and as a nation Americans have always performed best in crises, like the Depression or WWII, times when we’re all asked to make sacrifices. Pampering us with interest-rate cuts and tax cuts… setting the stage for this new subprime/credit crisis.
Wake up, the train wrecked. Time to think positive, find solutions, demand sacrifices.

The only difference between the hard times of yesteryear is the surfeit of liberal thought eg. “Let the government save me while I idle away my time.” Perhaps an economic wedgie of hard conditions might change their aversion to self-sufficiency. Then again, they may just starve.

When the Democrats and RINOs tell you they need more tax revenues, ask them which tax they want to raise.

Not everyone pays all these taxes in every state; some states tax unprepared food, others like New Hampshire tax the scenic view you have from your property. To insult you further all tax, at some level, your view of the coffin lid. Politicians will look you in the eye and tell you most of these aren’t taxes, they’re fees for allowing you to exist.

This list is by no means definitive. Many more state and local “fees” are in place, limited only by the imagination of the “Elected Elite.”

• Accounts Receivable Tax
• Building Permit Tax
• CDL license Tax
• Cigarette Tax
• Corporate Income Tax
• Dog License Tax
• Excise Taxes
• Federal Income Tax
• Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
• Fishing License Tax
• Food License Tax
• Fuel Permit Tax
• Gasoline Tax (42 cents per gallon)
• Gross Receipts Tax
• Hunting License Tax
• Inheritance Tax
• Inventory Tax
• IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
• Liquor Tax
• Luxury Taxes
• Marriage License Tax
• Medicare Tax
• Personal Property Tax
• Property Tax
• Real Estate Tax
• Service Charge Tax
• Social Security Tax
• Road UsageTax
• Sales Tax
• Recreational Vehicle Tax
• School Tax
• State Income Tax
• State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
• Telephone Federal Excise Tax
• Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
• Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
• Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
• Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
• Telephone State and Local Tax
• Telephone Usage Charge Tax
• Utility Taxes
• Vehicle License Registration Tax
• Vehicle Sales Tax
• Watercraft Registration Tax
• Well Permit Tax
• Workers Compensation Tax

When you are unemployed, the tax on your unemployment check is a tax on a tax you all ready paid, same with worker’s comp.

Lock and Load!

I’ve posted on this recently. Here is another take from Eric over at Viking Pundit. Also a link to more information.

[snip]

The Scope and Consequences of the National Debt
The total debt has two parts. The first part is debt held by the public, which is owed to individuals, corporations, the Federal Reserve, and state, local, and foreign governments that purchase bonds and other Treasury Securities. The public debt makes up $5.1 trillion of the overall debt. The second part is debt held by the government, which represents money that was borrowed by the government from surpluses in the Social Security Trust Fund and other government accounts. Government debt makes up the remaining $3.9 trillion of the total national debt. [snip]

If this doesn’t worry you, then you have to be sleeping in a casket and short timing you stay here.

A big thank you to Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York for making our entire nation less secure today:

Fulfilling a campaign promise, Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced today that residents will be able to apply for state driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status. Applicants for driver’s licenses will no longer be required to provide a Social Security number or show that they are eligible for one. Instead, they will be allowed to provide foreign passports, previous state driver’s licenses and “other valid and verifiable documents” to prove their identity. 

Fantastic!  Eliott takes the de facto national ID system and junks it overnight.  The next Mohamed Atta can now get a valid NY drivers license with no questions asked.  We’re all a lot less secure tonight thanks to this mental midget.

Bush says economy is in good shape despite recession fears.

more below from him

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

China threatens ‘nuclear option’ of dollar sales

The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.

· Blog - Dollar to collapse?

Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning - for the first time - that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.

Canada’s Dollar At Parity on U.S. Weakness, Commodity Surge

Canada’s dollar rose, trading equal to the U.S. dollar for the first time in 31 years, as climbing commodity prices boosted the outlook for the world’s eighth-biggest economy.

Oil prices jump above $82 a barrel

Commodities prices on Wednesday rose with crude oil hitting its sixth consecutive record high above $82 a barrel and spot gold approaching a near 28-year high of $730 an ounce troy. Base metals registered rises of between 2 and 10 per cent.

Agricultural commodities were down on profit-taking and signals that some food importing countries, such as India, had bought enough cereals for their inventories.

Crude oil jumped to a $82.51 after a larger-than-expected fall in US crude oil inventories last week.

China Freezes Some Prices in Move to Contain Inflation

BEIJING (AP) — China’s government has ordered some prices frozen and told officials to closely monitor others in its most drastic step yet to contain a surge in inflation.

The order, issued late Wednesday, came after inflation rose to 6.5 percent in August — its highest monthly rate in 11 years — propelled by a double-digit rise in politically sensitive food prices.

The order stressed the importance of maintaining “market stability” ahead of a key Communist Party meeting next month. It said controlling inflation would affect China’s development, reform and stability.

Oil Up Again As Low Dollar Spurs Buying

Crude Futures Surpass $83 a Barrel, Driven Largely by Weakening Dollar

NEW YORK (AP) — Crude oil prices surged further into record terrain Thursday, breaching $83 a barrel as the weak dollar and some worrisome weather in the Gulf of Mexico spurred buying.

Gasoline futures jumped as well. {snip]

A weak dollar supports oil prices by making futures cheaper for foreign investors, noted Antoine Halff, head of energy research at Fimat USA LLC.

It also prompts buying by domestic investors, who sense that demand for Nymex oil is rising overseas, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Bush Optimistic About Economy

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Thursday cited “some unsettling times” in the U.S. housing and credit markets as he sought to assure jittery Americans that the economy basically is in good shape despite worries about a recession.

…and the question is, what’s this all about?”

For starters, it’s about our failure to save for the future. With childish glee we buy anything we see in a hedonistic frenzy: plasma screen TV, cars with a 60 month loan package, 5000 sq ft houses with ARMs, lavish vacations, spa treatments, plastic surgery, every electronic gewgaw, and oversized waistlines. If not borrowed through a bank, then on plastic it goes.

Given that we ceased manufacturing most of these items through offshore means and outsourced many more jobs, our capital (dollars) followed the production and jobs. This is one reason.

Here’s another. We will not fix the drain on the tax base by Medicare, Medicaid, Prescription drug plan, and Social Security. Instead, we financed this huge burden by selling Treasury bonds and T-bills. Worse, the government uses abnormal accounting methods to cover the gaps. When they amalgamated the Social Security fund with the general fund, it permitted the Great Society programs to survive until they enrolled too many voters to scrap it. When one robs Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains.

So what happens?

The entire outflow of capital (dollars) goes somewhere; they convert to treasury notes with a guaranteed rate of return of principal and interest (future taxes). Countries are investors like everyone else; they go where the return rate is best.

The pop of the housing bubble forced banks and mortgage companies, by banking law, to initiate foreclosure proceedings. By law, at 120 days, bad loans are collected or written off against profit, which really electrifies the stockholders. The market saw them bail out of lending institutions, resulting in the drop in stock prices: Countrywide, Citi, Stanley Morgan, and Merrill Lynch to name some.

The Fed jumped in to improve liquidity by reducing interest rate by 50 basis points. The stock market went up, the banks took happy pills, and there was joy in Mudville.

Except

Other countries didn’t like the rate change (they lend money from overnight to 30 year investment bonds) and cashed in dollars for something other than greenbacks. Anything worked fine. The US is required to redeem these notes, which we pay for with Pounds, Euros, Swiss Francs, Ryials, clamshells, or worse gold. The US just became poorer.

To correct this, we will have to reduce the National Debt, (not just the deficit) by either cutting spending, raising taxes plus manufacturing goods here once more. Putting Americans to work in jobs we offshored starts the program. Getting the illegals out and cutting welfare programs forces the non-workers to change or get hungry.

We will find foreign imports more expensive; buying them will be inflationary (Remember Carter’s stagflation). To cut off the outflow of money, interest rates go up on short term borrowing which cuts into corporate growth, further damaging the economy. What say you Yogi. Something about Deja?

We can correct all this. We will have to put the socialist/liberals/Marxists on Thorzine to quiet them down

Now read the above links again to see just how serious this will be.

One more item needs addressing. China is threatening to utilize the “nuclear option” of dumping dollars onto the open market ($1.33 trillion), which would require our redeeming them, or suffer bankruptcy.

In past times, this construed an act of war.

A charmingly lucid methodology to a significant problem, this should surpass the moonbat EU members before long, dispersing wisdom like pixie dust on the wind, leaving them broached like dead whales.

Switzerland: Europe’s heart of darkness?

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country’s immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe’s heart of darkness? By Paul Vallely
At first sight, the poster looks like an innocent children’s cartoon. Three white sheep stand beside a black sheep. The drawing makes it looks as though the animals are smiling. But then you notice that the three white beasts are standing on the Swiss flag. One of the white sheep is kicking the black one off the flag, with a crafty flick of its back legs.
The poster is, according to the United Nations, the sinister symbol of the rise of a new racism and xenophobia in the heart of one of the world’s oldest independent democracies.

A worrying new extremism is on the rise. For the poster – which bears the slogan “For More Security” – is not the work of a fringe neo-Nazi group. It has been conceived – and plastered on to billboards, into newspapers and posted to every home in a direct mailshot – by the Swiss People’s Party (the Schweizerische Volkspartei or SVP) which has the largest number of seats in the Swiss parliament and is a member of the country’s coalition government.

With a general election due next month, it has launched a twofold campaign which has caused the UN’s special rapporteur on racism to ask for an official explanation from the government. The party has launched a campaign to raise the 100,000 signatures necessary to force a referendum to reintroduce into the penal code a measure to allow judges to deport foreigners who commit serious crimes once they have served their jail sentence.

But far more dramatically, it has announced its intention to lay before parliament a law allowing the entire family of a criminal under the age of 18 to be deported as soon as sentence is passed.

It will be the first such law in Europe since the Nazi practice of Sippenhaft – kin liability – whereby relatives of criminals were held responsible for their crimes and punished equally.

The proposal will be a test case not just for Switzerland but for the whole of Europe, where a division between liberal multiculturalism and a conservative isolationism is opening up in political discourse in many countries, the UK included. [snip]

Dr Schlüer is a small affable man. But if he speaks softly he wields a big stick. The statistics are clear, he said, foreigners are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals. “In a suburb of Zürich, a group of youths between 14 and 18 recently raped a 13-year-old girl,” he said. “It turned out that all of them were already under investigation for some previous offence. They were all foreigners from the Balkans or Turkey. Their parents said these boys are out of control. We say: ‘That’s not acceptable. It’s your job to control them and if you can’t do that you’ll have to leave’. It’s a punishment everyone understands.” [snip]

What an agreeably cogent approach to parenting and crime control this is.

And it is all so worrying to human rights campaigners that the UN special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diène, warned earlier this year that a “racist and xenophobic dynamic” which used to be the province of the far right is now becoming a regular part of the democratic system in Switzerland.

Dr Schlüer shrugged. “He’s from Senegal where they have a lot of problems of their own which need to be solved. I don’t know why he comes here instead of getting on with that.”

Such remarks only confirm the opinions of his opponents. Mario Fehr is a Social Democrat MP for the Zürich area. He says: “Deporting people who have committed no crime is not just unjust and inhumane, it’s stupid. Three quarters of the Swiss people think that foreigners who work here are helping the economy. We have a lot of qualified workers – IT specialists, doctors, dentists.” To get rid of foreigners, which opponents suspect is the SVP’s real agenda, “would be an economic disaster”.

Here’s the usual liberal drek, a leap from the logical Particular to the Universal where every foreigner is frogmarched out of the country. Sounds suspiciously like our own brand of loons. With the left, there is only all, no terms used like some, few or most.

Dr Schlüer insists the SVP is not against all foreigners. “Until war broke out in the Balkans, we had some good workers who came from Yugoslavia. [snip]

The abuse of social security is a key problem. It’s estimated to cost £750m a year. More than 50 per cent of it is by foreigners.”

Does this not sound familiar? This is happening in our own social programs.

There is no disguising his suspicion of Islam. He has alarmed many of Switzerland’s Muslims (some 4.3 per cent of the 7.5 million population) with his campaign to ban the minaret. “We’re not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established.” And Islamic law, he says, is incompatible with Switzerland’s legal system.

Islamic law (Shari’a) is incompatible with any democratic form of law, no exceptions.

To date there are only two mosques in the country with minarets but planners are turning down applications for more, after opinion polls showed almost half the population favours a ban. What is at stake here in Switzerland…is a clash that goes to the heart of an identity crisis…of a globalised economy, increased immigration flows, the rise of Islam as an international force and the terrorism of 9/11. Switzerland only illustrates it more graphically than elsewhere. [snip]

He is fiercely proud of his nation’s independence, which can be traced back to a defensive alliance of cantons in 1291. He is a staunch defender of its policy of armed neutrality, under which Switzerland has no standing army but all young men are trained and on standby; they call it the porcupine approach – with millions of individuals ready to stiffen like spines if the nation is threatened. [snip] The transfer of power from the commune to Brussels would seriously change things for the ordinary Swiss citizen.”

Switzerland has the toughest naturalisation rules in Europe. To apply, you must live in the country legally for at least 12 years, pay taxes, and have no criminal record. The application can still be turned down by your local commune which meets to ask “Can you speak German? Do you work? Are you integrated with Swiss people?”

It can also ask, as one commune did of 23-year-old Fatma Karademir – who was born in Switzerland but who under Swiss law is Turkish like her parents – if she knew the words of the Swiss national anthem, if she could imagine marrying a Swiss boy and who she would support if the Swiss football team played Turkey. “Those kinds of questions are outside the law,” says Mario Fehr. “But in some more remote villages you have a problem if you’re from ex-Yugoslavia.”

The federal government in Berne wants to take the decision out of the hands of local communities, one of which only gave the vote to women as recently as 1990. But the government’s proposals have twice been defeated in referendums.

The big unspoken fact here is how a citizen is to be defined. “When a Swiss woman who has emigrated to Canada has a baby, that child automatically gets citizenship,” Dr Schlüer says. But in what sense is a boy born in Canada, who may be brought up with an entirely different world view and set of values, more Swiss than someone like Fatma Karademir who has never lived anywhere but Switzerland?

The truth is that at the heart of the Swiss People’s Party’s vision is a visceral notion of kinship, breeding and blood that liberals would like to think sits very much at odds with the received wisdom of most of the Western world. It is what lies behind the SVP’s fear of even moderate Islam. It has warned that because of their higher birth rates Muslims would eventually become a majority in Switzerland if the citizenship rules were eased. It is what lies behind his fierce support for the militia system. [snip]

The drama which is being played out in such direct politically incorrect language in Switzerland is one which has repercussions all across Europe, and wider.

Neutrality and nationality
* Switzerland has four national languages – German, Italian, French and Romansh. Most Swiss residents speak German as their first language.

* Switzerland’s population has grown from 1.7 million in 1815 to 7.5 million in 2006. The population has risen by 750,000 since 1990.

* Swiss nationality law demands that candidates for Swiss naturalisation spend a minimum of years of permanent, legal residence in Switzerland, and gain fluency in one of the national languages.

* More than 20 per cent of the Swiss population, and 25 per cent of its workforce, is non-naturalised.

* At the end of 2006, 5,888 people were interned in Swiss prisons. 31 per cent were Swiss citizens – 69 per cent were foreigners or asylum-seekers.

* The number of unauthorised migrant workers currently employed is estimated at 100,000.

Sippenhaft or Sippenhaftung-Liberals ought to love this concept:

It should be noted that other totalitarian regimes have used similar practices, even if they have not codified them in law. During Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s many thousands of people were arrested and executed or sent to labour camps as “relatives of the enemies of the people.” One well-known example was Anna Larina, wife of Nikolai Bukharin. Similar practices took place in the People’s Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A prominent example is Deng Pufang, son of Deng Xiaoping. They also take place currently in North Korea.

 This video clip will help you understand for whom the ACLU, the Unions, and this judge are concerned. A needed change in the name of the ACLU has to be forthcoming. Substitute Alien for American to get the properly terminology.

Judge halts illegal immigrant notices

SAN FRANCISCO - The Social Security Administration cannot start sending out letters to employers next week containing notification of more serious penalties for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Ruling on a lawsuit by the nation’s largest federation of labor unions against the U.S. government, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney granted a temporary restraining order prohibiting the so-called “no-match” letters from going out as planned starting Tuesday. [snip]

She set the next hearing on the matter for Oct. 1.

The Social Security Administration has sent out “no-match” letters for more than two decades warning employers of discrepancies in the information the government has on their workers. Employers often brushed aside the letters, and the small fines that sometimes were incurred, as a cost of doing business.

But this year, those letters will be accompanied by notices from the Department of Homeland Security outlining strict new requirements for employers to resolve those discrepancies within 90 days or face fines or criminal prosecution, if they’re deemed to have knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

The judge’s ruling Friday temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing the new rules, which were scheduled to take effect Sept. 14. [snip]

The judge is worried that the letters “might” conflict with the law. How is beyond logic, since the law(s) passed in 1986 (never enforced) requires this enforcement.

I believe the correct term for this action is subversion of law!

President Bush is finally going to enforce our immigration and employment laws. He certainly still favors “comprehensive” immigration reform, but even unwilling “converts” are welcome.

The stunning thing about illegal immigration is just how grossly negligent the government has been protecting us. Just look at this list of “changes” and tell me why our current slate of politicians shouldn’t be run out of office on a rail:

Under the most significant change, disclosed earlier this week, many employers could be required to fire employees who used false Social Security numbers.

No more identity fraud? Oh, the humanity.

… detain more of the immigrants caught illegally crossing the border.

Enforce the borders? Be still my heart.

Moreover, administration officials said they would try to match up records of the arrival and departure of noncitizens entering and leaving the United States.

My head is starting to hurt.

Administration officials said they were also planning to step up efforts to arrest and deport illegal immigrants who were members of street gangs.

They’re only here to be members of gangs that Americans are too busy to be members of.

And they said federal agents would fan out across the country to hunt down “alien fugitives” who had been ordered to leave the United States but failed to comply.

If a US citizen owed the government $5 in back taxes, you can bet the government would find a way to locate them.

Like I said, it’s good that President Bush is finally enforcing our laws, but it’s what he should have been doing all along. It’s hard to give him extra credit for finally doing his job.

I heard about this last week, couldn’t get info I wanted before.

Vermont wants this more than a pross wants a john; will produce the same results too.

Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2007; Page A14
…So we hope the eyes of America will turn to Wisconsin, and the effort by Madison Democrats to make that “progressive” state a petri dish for government-run health care. This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the “single-payer,” universal coverage folks end up…. And, wow, is “free” health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker. Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined….As if that’s not enough, the health plan includes a tax escalator clause allowing an additional 1.5 percentage point payroll tax to finance higher outlays in the future. This could bring the payroll tax to 16%. One reason to expect costs to soar is that the state may become a mecca for the unemployed, uninsured and sick from all over North America….

See the next post for the blind leading the blind. Socialism is truly a mentally incapacitating condition.

I’ll give Bush a chance to prove this.

I want to see how many of our ethically driven DC critters try to prevent ICE, the Social Security people, and other agencies from doing their job. As soon as the law is enforced, the moaning will start.

In the past, when their constituents complained, Georgia congressmen threatened the INS funding, stopping the raids, when they enforced the law in that state.

Next, let us purge the voter roles of all those who manage to vote while taking a dirt nap. That will start a riot among the entrenched incumbents.

Employers Brace for Immigration Rules

WASHINGTON (AP) - Employers across the country may have to fire workers with questionable Social Security numbers to avoid getting snagged in a Bush administration crackdown on illegal immigrants. [snip]

The rule as drafted requires employers to fire people who can’t be verified as a legal worker and can’t resolve within 60 days why the name or Social Security number on their W-2 doesn’t match the government’s database.

Employers who don’t comply could face fines of $250 to $10,000 per illegal worker and incident. [snip]

For Mark Chamblee, the stricter rule could mean losing some of his 28 workers at his nursery in Tyler, Texas.

Chamblee suspects a few of his workers could have trouble with their Social Security numbers and said he will fire them if the problems aren’t resolved.

“Of course, it would add to the workload for the other workers,” he said. “It would reduce our production and our output. Not all of our demand would be met on our products. Operating costs would go up.”

Ray Atkinson, a spokesman for Pilgrim’s Pride Corp., confirmed that the country’s largest chicken processing company recently fired employees at two Texas plants.

The company’s policy “for some time now” has been to terminate employees who can’t clear up discrepancies, Atkinson said.

“We’re all very cautious and we’re all very nervous,” Chamblee said.

Mr. Chamblee has a reason to be nervous. If he wishes to stay in business, he will have to hire from a pool of workers who will not work for below minimum wage, probably will want considerably more. Getting rid of the illegals forces better wages for those legally in the market. As always, Mr. Chamblee has a choice, more than the legal workers had when competing unfairly.

When Silence Isn’t Golden

Aug. 6, 2007 issue - If you haven’t noticed, the major presidential candidates—Republican and Democratic—are dodging one of the thorniest problems they’d face if elected: the huge budget costs of aging baby boomers. In last week’s CNN/YouTube debate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson cleverly deflected the issue. “The best solution,” he said, “is a bipartisan effort to fix it.” Brilliant. There’s already a bipartisan consensus: do nothing. [snip]

Getting out of this complexity will be painful.
Starting in 1974, Congress moved the Social Security money into the General Fund, spending it as fast as the tax collections accumulated. This gaffe grows like Topsy.

The idea that big(ger) government solves all problems has no currency in history. Consider all of the countries that tried and are trying this route; a portfolio of dictators, tyrants and failed attempts.

Governments do not have money! They print, borrow or steal it. Call any interest paid on bonds, T-bills or other governmental largess by its rightful name: future tax increases.

The government can reasonably do this in time of war; the survival of the population is at stake. Running the government on a daily basis by these means is a fallacy of great magnitude. This renders the currency valueless, while the citizenry wallows in welfare servitude, protected by mercenary armies and slaves labor for them.

Rome did this. After the barbarians left Rome, they left the carcass for the vultures.

These birds are starting to circle us.

US businesses fear illegal foreign worker crackdown

US businesses are bracing for a possible major crackdown on illegal foreign workers, as the government seeks to give immigration authorities more power to punish companies hiring undocumented workers.

President George W. Bush’s administration has proposed a federal regulation that unions warn could lead to mass firings nationwide by companies seeking to avoid prosecution and fines.

“It’s going to put businesses all over the nation in a bind,” said Tamar Jacoby, an immigration expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

“If the feds (federal authorities) really follow through with this, and I think they’re going to, you’re going to see lots of industries … leave the US,” Jacoby said.

The rule under consideration in Washington relates directly to the potentially fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, which employees provide at the time of hiring. [snip]

This is in the category of I’ll believe it when I see it!

The largest chicken processor in the United States, Pilgrim’s Pride, has fired more than 100 employees who cannot produce valid Social Security numbers, according to news reports and advocates for the workers in rural east Texas.

Experts describe the firings as a pre-emptive move ahead of beefed-up enforcement. [snip]

Companies that knowingly hire illegal workers can face criminal prosecution and be hit with fines of up to 10,000 dollars per worker for repeat violations.

According to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the proposed rule remains pending. But business leaders believe authorities may announce its final adoption before the summer is out. [snip]

“It’s going to put employers in a position pretty quickly of, I think, having to terminate workers,” said John Gay, vice-president for government relations at the National Restaurant Association. “We are concerned about it.”

With 2 million inmates locked up, a ready work force is available. Through a work/release program all these plants will have all the workers they need. No violent inmates get a chance.

How to make it succeed is simple. You toil until your sentence is up, then you get released. That’s why it’s called work/release. Non-violent inmates work for the prevailing wage paid to legally employed citizens, no discrimination in pay. Invest the money for the worker, release him/her when his sentence is up, give him the money tax-free. If they are paid $0.15/hr to work in a prison shop, withhold that to offset prison costs. That’s a better deal than he/she receives now

Once out he can blow the money on success or drugs; the individuals choice. Backsliding produces life at hard labor with no parole and no pay.