A Washington Post article claims Tom Daschle didn't pay his taxes. Over the past three years Tom Daschle didn't pay $128K he owned. The least you could do, as a proponent of big government is to pay your taxes.

Financial Crisis and Entitlements

We have to be ever more vigilant in times of crisis to make sure that the Federal Government doesn't overstep its bounds. As Congressman Jim Moran states on his website:

From its inception in 1935, Social Security has been a safe, stable, and dependable source of financial assistance for retirees and their families. Today, 95 percent of all workers are covered by Social Security and 6 out 10 seniors depend on it for over half of their total income.

The problem is that Social Security was designed to be a temporary measure to help people who had their retirement saving or pensions wiped out and to encourage people to retire in order to allow younger workers to be able to get jobs. Now all social security does it cause people to take excessive risk with their retirement account, and put a financial burden on younger workers.

We should have gotten rid of Social Security a long time ago, but now it is a sunk cost and people expect it. Had we rid ourselves of Social Security after its immediate purpose was accomplished, we would be able to institute a temporary system to help support retirees that have had there savings wiped out by the current crisis, if we need to. Now we don't have the reserves to be able to do this.

We need to be sure that we don't allow any new temporary programs instituted as a fix for problems during this financial crisis become entitlements.

Getting businesses to take security seriously

Over at the Armchair Generalist is a post about security chemical facilities. The DHS is requiring 7,000 facilities to improve the security of their chemical storage and manufacturing.

Having worked in computer security in the past, I know that most business don't take security seriously until after they have an incident. Even then it isn't all that important. The problem is that most people don't think about security when making purchasing decisions.

Since security failures often effect people other than the producer and consumer of a companies products. With the chemical facilities, it may impact many other people that don't have anything to do with the facility or their products.

The threat of lawsuits could convince some companies that they need to improve security, but as we've seen with the airlines and 9/11, the government is too willing to bailout companies with poor security when there is a terrorist attack.

Bloomberg for NYS Governor

A recent poll found Mike Bloomberg, NYC mayor is the favorite for New York State Governor. If he does run, and wins, the citizens of New York State can kiss there liberty good bye. Let us look at some of th actions he has taken as mayor of New York City.

1. He raised the city's portion of the cigarette tax from $0.08 per pack to $1.50 per pack and want to raise it again to $2.00n per pack. So you can expect him to raise taxes on anything he doesn't like.
2. He has aggressively attacked the second amendment, including suing gun manufacturers and running out of state sting operations against federally licensed firearms dealers in an attempt to single handedly shutdown the gun industry. Don't expect a pesky thing like to constitution to stop Mike Bloomberg.
3. He replaced the school board with direct mayor control. Expect him to take over any government agency he feels is under performing. With his management style and desire to assume direct control, if he could, he probably would impose Martial Law on New York State. It would be easy, as once he is done with his gun control inititives no one except him and his troop will have any weapons.

So do you still want Mike Bloomberg as Governor?

Earmarks by State

Instapundit points to an interesting map of earmarks by state. I the Texas ranking very interesting, as I normally think of Texas as one of the more libertarian states, but it ranks 2nd overall for total earmark dollars.

Death of an Immigrant

Recently Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez fainted on farm east of Stockton, CA and died a few days later. This incident is disturbing on many levels. She was working in a field, where the temperature was above 95 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a ten minute walk from where she was working to a water cooler. She became dehydrated and eventually passed out due to heat exhaustion. Delays in getting her proper medical attention eventually lead to her death.

Her finance, who was working side by side with her, claimed that the foreman wouldn't give them a long enough break to go to the water cooler and get water. Since they were both in the country illegally, they feared losing their employment and possibly being reported to immigration if they didn't do exactly as the foreman said.

That is the first tragedy. Our immigration laws do little to keep immigrant out of the country. What they do is make it possible for employers to exploit labor. Employers can under pay labor, or even break their (oral) contracts with the laborers by not paying them after the laborer has performed the work. Since they are illegal, the laborers don't have much recourse in this situation.

When my Grandparent arrived in the United States, less than 100 years ago, there were few immigration restrictions. Basically, if you were healthy and were not a known criminal, you were let into our country and could work any job you could get. This helped build our country. Many of these immigrants started out as street vendors or working in poor conditions. They lifted themselves out of these conditions by entrepreneurial spirit and organization of labor unions. Eventually, the labor unions found that they could turn the tables on employers by getting the government to pass labor laws that tied the hands of employers.

Getting rid of labor laws which restrict who can work and getting rid of immigration laws which restrict who can come into the country could have prevented this tragedy.

But that is not the only way that this tragedy could have been prevented. Would productivity really dropped that much if the foreman let people move the water cooler closer to where the laborers were working?

Is any job worth dying for? To make matters worse, Maria was two months pregnant. Is any job worth killing your unborn child for? Why didn't she disobey the foreman and go get water? Is fear of immigration that great? If it is, it only goes to reinforce the need to dismantle our current immigration restrictions and enforcement policies.

The President’s 2008 budget, provides $13 billion for border security and immigration enforcement, including $1 billion to construct fences. Can't this money be better spent, or returned to the taxpayers? Think about it, taxpayers are spending several billion dollars to allow business owners to exploit their workers by creating an unlevel playing field.

Is this really the American dream? Always remember the Declaration of Independence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is all men, not just the people who happened to enter our country before a certain date.

Bailouts

Why is it that the government keeps bailing out failing corporations? Whether it is Chrysler, the Savings and Loans, Airlines, or Bear Sterns? And now Congress is suggesting bailing out people who took out mortgages that they could not afford?

Since deregulation the Airline Industry as a whole has not been profitable, having lost a total of $13 billion over approximately 30 years. Yet time and time again, the government has bailed out the airlines. If the airlines had been left alone, many would have failed and the market would have corrected itself, but since the government is artificially propping up failing business, they don't change, knowing Uncle Sam will be there to get them out of a jam. This has kept airlines from reworking the basic business model so that they can make a profit.

Looking at the so called mortgage crisis, talk once again turns to the government bailing out institutions and individuals that made bad decisions.

Mortgage Lenders (such as Fannie Mae) made bad assumptions about the economy and the housing market and the rate of default. Why did they make such bad assumptions? For one thing, they figured that they would be able to reduce some of the risk by packaging loans into bundles (bonds) and selling the loans. The lenders then told the investors in these bonds, that they has certain risk associated with then and a certain interest rate, but didn't tell the investors what the model was that they used to come to these conclusions.

The investors (such as Bear Stearns) didn't question the lenders, they assumed that since the lenders had been right in the past, they would still be right, and bought these loans without proper investigation, or any contractual obligations to insure that the lenders packaged the loans correctly and modeled for situations such as the housing bubble bursting. Everyone, knew that there was a housing bubble, and it would eventually burst, but the investors figured that they would be able to make there profits and not be effected by a burst. They assumed a risk, in exchange for the potential of higher rates of returns. Professional investors should understand this, but in reality, professional investors saw only upside potential and reacted by seeing other professional investors putting money into these securities, and they didn't want to miss the boat.

Why should these investors now be bailed out by the government for making a poor decision? This will only reinforce this bad behavior.

Now lets look at the people who took out loans that they couldn't afford and are now facing foreclosure. Should they be bailed out? The mortgage documents that they signed clearly spelled out the risks associated with potential rate increases. They knew what there income and expense were (or should have). They could easily figure out what would happen if the interest rates rose, they even had a lawyer present (the closing attorney) to advise them. So why did they enter into the bad contracts. Again, they looked only at the upside potential (we can always resell the house for more money) and they saw their neighbors purchasing larger and larger houses and decided that they didn't want to miss the boat.

Once again, if the government bails them out, it will only reinforce bad behavior.

But what if the government doesn't bail anyone out? Will the economy collapse? I think not. For one thing, the investors will be much more willing to renegotiate the mortgages to make them more affordable to people who really can repay their loans. The profit won't be as high, but it will still be greater than if the mortgage is allowed to go into foreclosure. The people who took out these loans would rather pay a higher rate than they initially assumed that they would, but get to keep their house. Over time things will balance out, and everyone will have learned to look at the downside as well as the upside of contracts in the future.

Let people and corporations take the risks, and let them fail when things don't go right. In the short term there may be some (significant) pain, but in the long term the economy will be healthier for it.