Tag Archives: government

Immigration and Elections

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Elections have consequences, a man said. Among those consequences is the shape of subsequent elections, I say.

Republicans in the new Congress are preparing their own immigration legislation, with the first batch centered on better border security and easing immigration requirements in technology, agriculture, and some other areas of interest to employers.

A question in too many minds, though, is whether President Barack Obama would veto such legislation, either because the bills might restrict his “executive actions” involving refusing to enforce existing immigration law or because, Republican.

The question is in too many minds because it might impact whether Republicans pass the legislation at all.

If the bills are good in their own right, pass them. Let Obama veto them. Shape the 2016 elections with those vetoes. Bring on the consequences of the 2014 mid-terms.

Cutting Federal Spending

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Retired Federal judge and ex-US Senator (D, NY) James Buckley has an idea on this.

dismantle[] the more than 1,100 grants-in-aid programs that spend one-sixth of the federal budget on matters that are the exclusive business of state and local governments.
…
Those programs, which provide funding for Medicaid as well as everything from road and bridge construction to rural housing, job training and fighting childhood obesity—now touch virtually every activity in which state and local governments are engaged. Their direct cost has grown, according to the federal budget, to an estimated $640.8 billion in 2015 from $24.1 billion in 1970.

I’ve advocated elsewhere weaning the States off their Federal Medicaid grant addiction. The remaining 1,109 handouts to the States certainly should be eliminated, also. Those $641 billion compare to 2014’s Federal deficit of $483 billion. That surplus could be used to pay down (a little) our enormous Federal debt and to reverse its skyrocketing increase—a real bending of the curve.

That’s just the pecuniary fiscal cost of those programs and of the States’ addiction to them.

Because the grants come with detailed federal directives, they deprive state and local officials of the flexibility to meet their own responsibilities in the most effective ways, and undermine their citizens’ ability to ensure that their taxes will be used to meet their priorities rather than those of distant federal regulators.

Getting rid of these programs also would be a giant step toward restoring the Federalism that was, and can be again, the bedrock of our nation’s exceptionalism and greatness.

At Last, Shovel Ready Jobs

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And President Barack Obama only had to break the law (and the Constitution) to find them.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is looking to hire 1,000 new employees to process applications pertaining to President Barack Obama’s new executive action on immigration, the New York Times is reporting.

Never mind that existing immigration law makes his Executive “Action” mandating protection from deportation of illegal entrants into the US illegal. Never mind that his Constitutional mandate, and his oath of office to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, make his Executive “Action” illegal.

Because, jobs. And best of all,

The new positions have salaries that range up to $157,000 a year.

That’s better than road building—and they’re indoors, too. Can’t beat that with a…stick.

Technology, Oil, and Government

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Falling oil prices are a good thing. Except when they’re not. Or….

The irony in the falling prices is that the success of US producers using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling technologies is partly responsible, along with slowing demand by struggling Asian and European markets. Now that success could come back to bite the so-called fracking industry and other drillers in America.

[Wyoming Governor Matt, R] Mead acknowledged that in the short term, lower gas prices will benefit businesses and residents in his sparsely populated state, where distances between towns are often calculated in hours instead of minutes.

But, he pointed out, “If we see low prices continue for some time, we’ll see rigs start to lay down. And it’s not just the direct revenue. It’s the hotels, restaurants and all that goes with that.”

Not to mention jobs.

This is normal in a free market economy, though. New technologies, or old technologies like fracking whose time has come, are always disruptive. Recall the stereotypical, but no less accurate for that, impact on horse-drawn buggy and whip manufacturers with the advent of the horseless carriage and then the assembly line for making those automobiles cheap.

So it is with fracking. Not only does it make hard-to-get oil and natural gas (much) easier and (much) cheaper to get, it drastically increases the supply of these commodities, each of which individually drastically lowers the price of these, and together they synergistically do.

But when supply overshoots demand, and the price obtainable for oil and gas cannot cover even the lowered cost of extraction, many of the suppliers, extractors, stop producing, stop extracting. This has negative effects on both fracking jobs and the ancillary jobs Mead mentioned.

However, in a free market, supply and demand quickly match each other, and prices—and jobs—stabilize. With the technological advances associated with this commodity, too, as with any technological advance, the new pricing equilibrium will be lower than the prior equilibrium. It’s uncertain whether oil and gas pricing in particular will stabilize at their current levels, continue a little lower, or go a little higher. But it’s virtually certain we’re done with $100 oil for the foreseeable future, which is to the good of utilities, manufacturers, consumers, and anyone and anything that uses energy.

And those jobs? They’ll recover with the stability and predictability of the new normal in oil and gas extraction. The widespread use of fracking and related technologies also will lead to a net increase in employment when all is said and done, just like in those early automobile days.

The kicker here is identified by Kathleen Sgamma, Western Energy Alliance Vice President of Government and Public Affairs [emphasis added]:

There is a point at which the lower commodity price combined with the increased regulatory cost will put new wells out of business—they just won’t be drilled[.]

And [emphasis added]

whether a well is on private, state, or federal land, “because the regulatory environment is such that it makes it more expensive to develop on those federal or tribal lands.”

Government’s intrusive regulation wasn’t a factor in Henry Ford’s disruption.

US Defense, Foreign Policies

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Russia, China, Iran, and Islamists are waging unconventional warfare around the world, and the United States currently lacks a clear strategy to counter the threat, according to a recent report by the Army Special Operations Command.

“This challenge is hybrid warfare combining conventional, irregular, and asymmetric means, to include the persistent manipulation of political and ideological conflict,” states the Army white paper, Counter-Unconventional Warfare.

Foreshadowed by Iranian actions throughout the Middle East, and by Chinese “unrestricted warfare” strategists in the 1990s, hybrid warfare has now reached its most brazen form in Russia’s support for separatist insurgents in Ukraine.

[“Non-kinetic”] tools…include covert and clandestine special operations commando activities combined with political, intelligence, diplomatic, and financial warfare methods to counter the activities of states like Russia, China and Iran, and insurgent activities by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.

And

US government “lacks a cohesive [information warfare] strategy to counter adversary [unconventional warfare] campaigns conducted by state and non-state actors….”

Russian examples include

using special operations forces, intelligence agents, political provocateurs, and news media reporters, as well as transnational criminal elements in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“Funded by the Kremlin and operating with differing degrees of deniability or even acknowledgement, the Russian government uses ‘little green men’ for classic [unconventional warfare] objectives,” [according to the white paper].

Examples of the People’s Republic of China’s…techniques…include

unconventional warfare [based on the book,] Unrestricted Warfare…calls for using all means to defeat enemies, including cyber attacks, ecological warfare, financial warfare, and terrorism.

“China will use a host of methods, many of which lie out of the realm of conventional warfare,” [according to the white paper]. “These methods include trade warfare, financial warfare, ecological warfare, psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, resources warfare, economic aid warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare.”

Examples include China’s threat several years ago to sell off large US debt holdings to protest US arms sales to Taiwan, and cutting off sales of rare earth minerals to Japan in a dispute over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Chinese news outlets also are used in media warfare….

Iran’s techniques are more limited in scope, but no less deadly:

“…Iran provides ‘material support to terrorist or militant groups such as HAMAS, Lebanese Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, and Iraqi Shia groups,’ [according to the white paper]. “Hezbollah is the primary terrorists’ proxy for Iran working together with a campaign of terror against Israel, the United States, and other western nations.”

It’s entirely possible that an administration more interested in American global interests would have missed this, also. It’s virtually certain, though, that this administration, bent as it is on American withdrawal from the world, wouldn’t have cared even had it recognized any of this.

The Free Beacon‘s article is well worth reading in its entirety, and so is the USA SpecOps’ white paper on the matter.