June 1, 2006
At least Dan Quayle can take comfort in the fact that he's no Lloyd Bentsen. Actually, he can take comfort in that he is no Jack Kennedy either. The entire Kennedy hokum is now so thoroughly discredited that only the pubescent and star-struck pay any attention to a Kennedy (apart from the ever-riveting assassination conspiracies).
The irony need hardly be pointed out that the late, nasty, mean-spirited Bentsen, in delivering his best-known insult actually paid the mild-mannered Quayle a modest compliment.
There is no philosophy possible where fear of consequences is stronger than love of truth.
... John Stuart Mill
Personal information on 26.5 million veterans that was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month "may not be easily accessible" because most was stored in a specialized, standard format used for data manipulation and statistical analysis, according to VA privacy officer Mark Whitney, reported in a Washington Post story, June 1.
The format "requires specialized application software and training" to write computer code "to access and manipulate the data for use," Whitney wrote.
[The Dallas Morning News version of the story actually reported that the file was not encrypted and that the format is SAS, a statistical analysis package that has been in use for decades. Does the VA think there are no programmers out there? Veterans, grab your wallets. In the effort to cover their asses, the VA just made it easier on the thieves.--Ed.]
Your Lucky Day
(Host enters to applause)
Host: One hundred seventy-five dollars.
Audience: Ah...
Host: Six hundred sixty-five dollars.
Audience: Ah!
Host: Two thousand dollars.
Audience: Ah! yes...
Host: Eleven hundred forty-nine dollars.
Audience: Hm, ah...
Host: Six thousand seven hundred twenty-nine dollars.
Audience: Ah!
Host: Shall I go on?
Audience: Yes (scattered applause)
Host: I can't hear you!
Audience: Yes (voluminous applause)
Host: Twenty-two thousand four hundred sixty-three dollars and seventy-seven cents!
Audience: Wow, hurray. (sharp applause)
Host: Shall I go on?
Audience: Yes (thunderous applause)
Host: This could be the big one...
(sudden expectant silence)
Host: Two dollars thirty-five cents.
Audience: Aw... (sighs of disappointment)
Host: No, I was just kidding. Here it is. One million dollars.
Audience: Yes! Hurray! (extended deafening applause)
(curtain)
[Script for the number one TV game show of 2007]
On the Deaths of Economists
The recent alleged death of John Kenneth Galbraith has prompted reflection on the deaths of economists in general, in that they may seem to die, but they actually live on, in a kind of gnostic existence, through their ideas, just as though they themselves were still propounding them. Given all the evidence for their continued vitality, we are forced to question, if not outright reject, the demittal testimony of such uncertain witnesses as family, friends, doctors, and the like.
Can we, for instance, regard Prof. Galbraith as genuinely dead so long as the "War on Poverty" still impoverishes the unfortunate on our shores? Has the government ceased the attempts to "slow down" or "stimulate" the economy at will, to the extent that we can judge John Maynard Keynes as having actually gone on to his eternal reward? Karl Marx has not departed this earth entirely, it would appear, worshiped and consulted as he is by numerous tyrants-in-waiting. Even old Robert Malthus, with his tired, sky-is-falling, over-population fantasies, long thought to be blowing in a better world, appears to live on in the many Chicken Littles of this land, like Paul Erlich and Robert Heilbroner.
When, I beg, will we honor an economist of the past not out of personal or ideological loyalty but simply because what he said and wrote was correct? Not until an economist says something that is correct, I'm guessing.
We may have a long wait.
Absurdities abound:
- the "Minutemen" are called vigilantes and are thus the enemy, though they have yet to harm a soul, while the casualties from narco-terrorists and human smugglers run into the hundreds (or higher);
- the National Guard are to be mobilized to do a police job despite posse comitatus;
- laws have been passed making criminal an act which is not morally wrong--which is in fact positively virtuous--to hire someone to do otherwise perfectly legal and legitimate work;
- employers around the nation have been pressed into service as agents of the INS, while doing nothing more sinister than hiring people to do a day's work for a day's pay, while the actual rate of deportations drops;
- INS courts sit on cases of illegals who have been in the U.S. for years, involving family issues that would puzzle King Solomon, and render decisions that outrage virtually everyone;
- political chimeras (such as, designating English as the official language, which is like designating automobiles as the "official mode of American transport") knock the voters this way and that like a piñata;
The real reason people are crossing the border from Mexico to the United States, despite the risks, is that living in the U.S. is greatly to be preferred. It is an economic choice, and a very sensible one, at that. In fact, the risk-reward ratio makes it almost obligatory. Convincing people to change their behavior without altering the risk-reward ratio is like attempting to halt the revolution of the earth--it can't be done, and it should not even be contemplated by people with any sense.
To see this clearly, take any pair of adjacent cities at the border. On the U.S. side, one sees prosperous, often affluent, communities; on the other, one typically sees squalid slums and shanty towns. There is no difference in local climate, little difference in the makeup of the population, and hardly any difference in the culture. The defining difference is that on the U.S. side, people get to keep what they earn; on the Mexican side, the police and the government officials steal it. That is the difference, and that is all the difference. If, hypothetically, the border were to be pushed south twenty miles at some pair of cross-border neighbor cities, the visible differences between the cities would mostly vanish in two or three years, and all traces of a former border would be completely gone in ten years.
Everything is stolen in Mexico--aid, loans, petro-dollars, trade, wages, narco-income--all stuffed into the Swiss bank accounts of the political elites. Like José López Tortilla, um, Portillo, president of Mexico 1976-1982, who escaped to a life of comfort in Spain after an administration riddled with corruption and nepotism, the elites of Mexico live at everyone else's expense, watching out for themselves and each other but screwing the people and particularly the poor, squandering the rich natural resources of Mexico, the industry of its people, and their relatively high rate of literacy (for a third-world country).
It frankly shocked me to see so-called "immigration" protesters recently carrying Mexican flags. Do they want to bring that to the U.S.? I thought that was why they left Mexico.
We really do need to get a grip. The problem of illegal immigration from Mexico, though it has an economic cause, is not an economic problem. Sure, the affected states gripe about the cost of educating and hospitalizing and policing the 11 million or so illegal aliens, but these social institutions never have enough money. Sure, the local work forces gripe about wages, but wages are never high enough. One side gripes that illegal aliens are taking jobs that would go to American workers--the other side claims that illegals do jobs that American workers won't do. Truth is, neither argument has much traction.
I don't mean to suggest that illegal immigration has no impact. But, measured in dollars flowing out of the U.S., illegal immigration is economically insignificant. The Bank of Mexico reports funds transferred to Mexican families from workers, legal or otherwise, in the U.S. in 2005 at $20 billion--an absurdly small number. $20b can hardly be detected in the U.S. trade statistics. Shoot, $20b wouldn't buy Alan Greenspan a cup of warm soup at his club. (U.S. Imports and exports totaled $2.5 trillion in 2005. Trade with Mexico totaled $290 billion.) The boycott itself proved this proposition another way--no important economic institutions in the U.S. suffered from or even noticed the withdrawal of Mexicans from business transactions on that day.
Illegal immigration is a national security problem and a social problem, not an economic one. To deal with this, the U.S. should consider building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and guard it. This will slow the flood of illegals to a trickle. It works for Israel. It is fair, non-threatening, and humane. (After all, many countries in the world have, in the past, simply mined their frontiers. Some probably still do.)
So, here's the Fratricide border control plan:
- build a high-quality fence and guard it; then,
- do anything you want, including,
- do nothing;
- make political promises, and do nothing;
- make political promises, pass new laws, and do nothing;
- make political promises, pass new laws, appropriate funds, and do nothing.
- do nothing;
The foregoing high-confidence solution is offered free of charge.
Erecting a fence along the border will allow the other U.S. institutions involved a chance to catch up. The criminal elements can be identified by police and jailed or deported. The smugglers (humans and drugs) can be stopped or slowed down. And the border controls can be used to identify who is coming into the country and why. The nice thing about a fence is that once it is in place, it is not essential to change anything else: no juiced-up border patrol, no National Guard, no stepped up drug enforcement, no INS crackdown on employers--nothing has to change at all. Then we could take up this problem with the Mexican government, which is the cause of it all.
But that would be way too simple, wouldn't it?
The Michelangelo Code
It seems that the deranged man who smashed the nose of the Mary figure in Michelangelo's Pieta some years ago was not so crazy after all. It has recently been revealed that the supposed deranged man was actually looking for a tiny cylinder of vellum that the artist cemented into the figure's nose, which held a long-suppressed secret known only to the artist and a few hundred of his most trusted friends. Naturally, the vellum manuscript was swept up by Vatican art experts and hidden, while the "deranged" man was silenced in an insane asylum.
But an enterprising investigative reporter has followed up countless clues in Michelangelo's writings and sculptures that have resulted in revelation of an explosive secret. In an oral tradition passed down through the ages only from father on deathbed to son, it has been recorded that there were two versions of the Ten Commandments brought down by Moses from the mountain. The first and original version was revealed only to a few other people and then suppressed, and it is only the second that is well-known.
Naturally, because of the explosive nature of this secret, the reporter had to pore through tons of ancient manuscripts, avoid numerous car bombs and Vatican SWAT teams, take hallucinogenic drugs, and seduce some very attractive nuns, in order to arrive at the explosive TRUTH. But it can now be revealed, the secret is,
The first version was entitled "The Ten Suggestions."
After his ordeal and continued threats, the intrepid reporter is in hiding.
By the way, if you are looking for literary entertainment, I recommend Christopher Buckley's Florence of Arabia. This terrific satire on life, culture, oil, and politics in the Middle East is at times hilarious, telling, touching, and alarming. It has a delicious conspiracy-theory twist at the end, but the journey is every bit as enjoyable, making mincemeat of some of your favorite things: Arab-American relations, the State Department, Islamic male chauvinists, camel-drivers in Rolls Royces, and just about every foreign policy sacred cow known. Several times I laughed aloud during the reading. And for you anarcho-whatevers out there, the book contains, despite the humor, considerable actual malice towards governments. Delightful.
Florence of Arabia, by Christopher Buckley, is published by Random House, 2004, available all over the place.
All contents © Copyright 1995-2006 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 9:13 AM
