Known but to God...

....Memorial Day 2006

Congressional Office Cleaning Services

I’m wondering...since I’m politically-paranoid...if this kerfuffle isn’t actually a public shot-across-the-bow of Congress as a warning to the Democratically-controlled House launching into the swarm of “investigations” to harass the Bush administration in it’s final two years. Pelosi and Conyers have been making less-the-veiled threats to call “everyone” in on to the carpet and investigate them for any real or imagined wrongdoings. The clear message is “start looking through our trash, and we’ll send the FBI to start sifting through your's”.

Look for lot’s of sealed cardboard boxes to removed quietly between now and the Memorial Day weekend from congressional offices on both sides the Hill, and back home in the districts, as the staffs sanitize their files and ship the “offending” documents off to the same discreet storage facility that Hillary Clinton’s law firm used for her billing records. I forsee a sudden-shortage of cardboard storage boxes and packing tape at the local Beltway Staples store.

If Reform means Changes-made...

Six thousand National Guardsmen to the border. While I disagree with the concept of using troops; if you are going to use the military you need at-least two to three divisions (20-25,000 troops each) of regulars for atleast 6-years to do the job. The Guard are supposed to be part-time troops and their continued use strains the economy and their families; whereas regular troops have to be on-duty somewhere anyway. And to avoid unfortunate shootings like Enriques Valenzuela (the teenaged goatherd "accidentaly" shoot by Guardsmen) the troops need to be re-trained for border conditions and there long-enough to know their sector. And they need to be there long-enough to establish their military infastructure and to block-off and disrupt the entire culture of trans-border people and drug smuggling.

What I didn't hear was any strong message to the business community that it will be held to account for their use of undocumented or irregularily-documented workers....now, or in the future. As long as those jobs are there and available to the undocumented, people will cross the borders. While Bush called for 6,000 border gaurds, he did not call for greater employment enforcement. I reject the idea of knocks in the middle of the night by enforcement officers to immigrants' homes; but more than a few medium to large corporations' officers could stand a few days or weeks of inquisition over their hiring of illegals...and where the actual taxes-owed went. Just as the bootleggers were busted for taxes rather than booze; get the employers for tax-fraud and false reporting even if you can't for "irregular hiring"-practices. Businesses' with more than 10 or 15 employees could be audited by a number of governmental agencies to determine if they have been obeying the employment laws that have been on the books for over 15-years.

As part of the overall controversy, there's also the guest-workers vs. low-skilled visas vs. the highly skilled visa-quotas. From a pragmatic standpoint, do we “need” the highly-skilled as-much or more than the low-skills immigrants? In my own profession, the graduates schools are generally 50% or more foreign-nationals on student-visas…all hoping that their “unique” skills will allow them to stay in America while those same limited seats could have been filled by equally-talented and qualified US citizens who were passed-over. One reasons being that the foreign-nationals are willing to pay full-freight without scholarships and expensive grants. And while they were supposed to return home afterwards, the vast majority find ways to stay as “highly-skilled” immigrants through work-contacts made while in school.

Yet at the same time, disproportionally-few of those foreign-nationals actually stay in the profession and actually become licensed professinals. But by that time, the have achieved green-card status and are now free to pursue other lines of employment outside of the profession…yet their presence in the schools as visa-students denied talented US citizens the opportunity to enter the profession. And at the same time, almost every other nation forbids me from practicing in their country, reserving that “right” for their native-born.

Form a practical-basis, it probably does make sense to loosen the rules for those who have been here 10 to 20 years already simply as a recognition of reality. They are here and have assimulated already. But I would still support tighter limits on allowing student-visas and stricter enforcement that they return home afterwards…especially if the claim is that we need foreign-stuydents to spread our international influence. A foreign student who does not return home does not contribute to spreading American culture and influence at home, he’s here and possibly blocking the career-path of a US citizen, or even a green-card immigrant.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thecheckout/2006/05/bitter_words_over_a_sweet_ingr.html#comments

The "Fair Tax"

From what I've read, it doesn't seen such a bargain for many small business-owners. Plus, the implementation would immensely complicate thousands of historically-generated comparative transactions pre-tax vs, post-tax. As an Architect, most financial-transactions and business decisions are based on tax-free numbers as most expenses and purchases involve either tax-free capital-improvement expenses or professional services; you pay tax on your profits or capital gains. And I have yet successfully followed the complicated gymnastics as they try to explain the "fairness" of shifting from capital gains on the sale-end of the transaction to a sales-tax on frontfron-end of the transaction without driving-up the purchase-price of real estate to the point where home-construction grinds to a halt. An home construction is a huge segment of the construction-sector of the domestic economy, and one of the few that can't be out-sourced or supplanted by "foreign competition".

The numbers that I ran would suggest that it would double the cost of doing business in a business environment where I would not be able to double my fees to compensate for all the taxes. Plus adding a tax-collection burden that currently doesnÂ’t exist for a professional services provider.

If they can not clearly and rationally explain the financial-transition from tax-shielding through improvementsovements and capitaaccrual accural to a front-loaded sales tax on the Middle-Class' largest investment and expense...their home...they can't "sell" the fair tax. So-far, I think they have failed.

Already fading into obscurity....

Personally, I would have been more satified if Zacarias Moussaoui had been drawn-and-quartered in the ancient traditional-manner after a short hearing in October 2001, or early 2002.



But the jury's decision denies the Islamofasists a Martyr; and he'll eventually be forgotten in his fluorescent-lit hole, his eventual death an historical footnote in an ill-remembered nightmare long-faded in history.

First Anti-matter Drive, Now Cloaking...

Activate Cloaking Device.

..." The complex mathematical phenomenon outlined by Milton and Nicorovici closes the gap a little between science fiction and fact. The phenomenon is analogous to a tuning fork (which rings with a single sound frequency) being placed next to a wine glass. The wine glass will start to ring with the same frequency; it resonates. The cloaking effect would exploit a resonance with light waves rather than sound waves. The concept is at such a primitive stage that the scientists talk only at the moment of being able to cloak particles of dust - not spaceships."...

Ugly Xenophia?

What started as an issue of national security and national sovereignty is slowly morphing into an ugly campaign of xenophobia. To boycott Mexican goods and culture on Cinco de Mayo is xenophobia. What’s the next stage? A Kulturkampf against TexMex…”use Ketchup, not Salsa”?

There are 12-million to twenty-million people with families undocumented or with false papers in the United States. Ten-percent of the citizens of Republic Mexico are here in the United States legally or illegally. The tens of millions of Mexican-heritage live here legally as immigrants or citizens have relatives south of the Border. Hundreds of thousands of the illegally-resident Mexicans have US citizen-children or spouses. You can’t just “build a wall” right through the heart of this trans-border society. Nor can you “just” deport them. The last Western society that attempted to round-up 12-million “outsiders” from within it’s own borders and culture ended-badly. Are we to become yet another enlightened-yet-doomed culture with dreaded “knocks on the door in the middle of the night” and “ihre Ausweis, bitte”?

And it’s not just the Mexicans and the Salvadorans. There are 500,000 Chinese here illegally, including tens of thousands that have been found but China refuses to repatriate. Here in New Jersey, the Mexicans account for approx. 75,000 of the 355,000 undocumented or “irregular” residents. Shall we round-up the Canadians, the Irish next?

If the issue is natinal security, then we shoud concentrate on regularizing their status, not deportations and crushing fines. The greatest danger to our lives and way-of-life are the Islamofascists, not the stoop-laborers and the office-cleaners. If the way to enter the Unitesd States as a guest-worker or potential immigrant were easy and efficient; then they would not have to cross the borders in the middle of the Arizona desert. Or risk death by suffication in trans-Pacific shipping containers.

We must find the way to get them registered, biometrically-ID’d, on the tax-rolls, and licensed and insured. If they have legal status, it eliminates the means by which they are exploited…and eliminates the means by which their employers unfairly compete economically. And once the system is in-place, we shoud have a strict, vigorous campaign against the employers who contine to use “illegal workers” outside of the system.