Drill baby drill as long as it does not affect me, some may think…

So the first oil-soaked bird has been spotted in the on-going Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. Already the pungent odor of oil permeates the air of New Orleans — as if the hapless city needs more problems after Katrina and the Great Recession.

The whole fishery of the Gulf Coast, plus the valuable wetlands that both contribute to the ecosystem upon which all living things, including man, depend, as well as serve as a backstop against hurricanes, as well as the beaches and perhaps the shipping of the Mississippi River and Gulf area may be in grave danger.

I know one should not exaggerate or jump to conclusions, but when do we as a society draw the line and realize that as much as we need energy in the form of oil, we don’t want to destroy our nest called Earth in the process? I also realize that over time a lot of these environmental mishaps, both man caused and nature caused, heal themselves. But is it all worth the cost and will we eventually reach the point of no return? Have we almost done that now?

I imagine this has silenced the drill baby drill folks for the time — but I’m sure they’ll come up with some excuse as to why we have to despoil the Earth and ruin other peoples’ livelihoods (Louisiana fisherman for example, and Alaskan fisherman some time ago from the Exxon Valdez).

Yes BP will certainly have to pay for this one, but really we are all paying the price, and I for one think the price is too high.

There are safer ways to get oil, and we need to move towards other sources of energy anyway, but will never do it until something forces us to, but by the time we get there, it could be too late.

And when you drive your gas guzzler as your God-given right and enjoy nature do you still think to yourself: drill baby drill — just somewhere else where it does not affect me?

But the economic effects and the environmental effects of such disasters have dire implications for us all whether we realize it or not.

And while my non record of church attendance may make me the wrong person to ask this question, I nonetheless ask: Does God want us to treat what he created this way?

P.s.

I know that accidents happen and I assume that BP went to great lengths to prevent this very thing, but the point may be that it is nearly impossible to prevent such disasters in offshore drilling. And again, is it really worth the price? I think not.

I take another look at Arizona’s new illegal alien law; I still think it is not practical and maybe not legal, but concede it might be doing the job somewhat…

UPDATE: April 30, 2010: I’ve read reports now that other states, to include Oklahoma and Texas, are considering Arizona-type immigration laws. When the federal government fails to act, states will, it seems.

————————————————————————–

While I still think the Arizona illegal alien law is the wrong way to go, if I can believe a story I just read in today’s newspaper, maybe it has had some positive effect — positive if you are against illegal immigration, and I am.

The headline in the Sacramento Bee read: Day laborers plan to leave after Arizona jobs dwindle. The subhead read: Effects of immigrant law already felt in Phoenix.

To summarize, the story said that many day laborers have decided to leave Arizona because they are undocumented workers (illegal aliens, if you will) and they do not want to get caught, feeling they are more vulnerable under the state’s new law that would supposedly make it easier for law enforcement officers to check their immigration status and in fact makes it a separate state crime to be in the U.S. (Arizona anyway) illegally (the law actually does not go into effect until July, as I recall, but the buzz is out there).

Not from that story, but separately, I hear that Mexico has warned its citizens against traveling to Arizona lest they be ensnared in the illegal alien trap — kind of ironic being that Mexico is basically a third world country in the throws of something akin to civil war (a drug war that has is some respects made the nation a failed state). I think the U.S. has warned its citizens to beware of traveling in Mexico.

At any rate, if the law is really discouraging illegal aliens (even if it is primarily ones from Mexico) then maybe there is some positive effect from this new law that on its surface might seem problematic — what with racial profiling and an extra burden being put on police.

Its defenders are certainly correct that Arizona felt pressure to do something because the federal government has not been effective in policing the border.

As we all know, the problems are that illegals, many from Mexico, pour across the border and compete with our own citizens for work (well some say they don’t compete because they take jobs U.S. citizens won‘t do, but that is a different issue, which could be debated and is addressed to some extent later in this blog), and that drug traffickers, the same ones who are challenging civil society in Mexico, and wreaking havoc on the border and elsewhere in the U.S.

As for the lure of jobs, I along with so many others cannot understand why more is not done to keep employers from hiring illegals. I believe that in the case of farm workers (an area that I have had contact with) government authorities are actually complicit in the practice of using illegal labor. In other industries, this may be true too.

Even before word of the new crackdown in Arizona, illegals had already faced the reality of fewer jobs, especially in constriction, due to the sagging economy.

The Bee story (actually Associated Press, by Amanda Lee Myers) said, in part: “the law’s supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.”

Another paragraph in the story quoted an Arizona researcher as saying: “That’s really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low level) jobs… I think economics provides the answer. If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage.”

And as I have blogged before, that last part is really the whole issue. There just seems to be a feeling among some, primarily employers I suppose, that certain types of work must be filled by people willing to accept lower wages and thus a lower standard of living than most of the rest of society. Certainly supply and demand does answer this problem. If citizenship or other allowed documentation were required for employment, the nation would benefit from a workforce that is a full-fledged part of the economic system and theoretically the government would not be on the hook nearly as much for jobless benefits because more work would be available. Employers still fear, however, that if only U.S. citizens were available they might have to offer better compensation and working conditions. What is wrong with that? I ask.

P.s.

I also read an article in the New York Times Opinion section that defends the new Arizona law that is aimed at giving police there more authority to detain illegal aliens and makes it a separate state crime to be an illegal alien. It said that predictably the law’s detractors had not even read the bill. I plead guilty. I blogged against it and I had not read it — still have not. I depended upon news summaries. I read the afore-mentioned article and took in its summary. It gave me something to think about, but I was still not convinced it is the way to go. I doubt I will look up the actual text of the new law. I imagine it will be challenged in court and justices will do their own legal analyses.

We do need immigration reform, which basically in my mind means we need stepped-up enforcement. But it needs to be on a national level, in a coordinated approach.

But meanwhile, maybe Arizona is getting what it wants, and, who knows? other states might feel compelled to copy it in the absence of action on the national level.

Capitalists may need to know the rules more than they need bailouts…

I don’t have the credentials to speak about finance but I have credentials to speak as an ordinary person. And I still say that the government bailouts for Wall Street investment banks and for the auto companies were a mistake.

You’re not likely to get bailed out when you go to a casino and lose a bet, why should you get bailed out when you bet in the securities markets?

In fact the whole gambling industry would go down the tubes if there was such a thing as a bailout. The game would be ruined.

For there to be winners there has to be losers and for there to be big winners, there has to be big losers — win, win does not really happen in gambling and in Wall Street securities trading.

But it is important for the game to be on the up and up — people lose interest once they realize the deck is stacked. And if they do not realize it, they stand to lose their retirement in the financial markets.

An article I read in the Wall Street Journal (I believe it was there) indicated that regulatory agencies were understaffed. While it does seem to be true that some of the high-priced lawyers were wasting time looking at porn on government computers when they should have been doing whatever they could do to protect the investing public, the article noted, the agencies were understaffed, with lawyers having to do menial work usually given to support personnel. I would say the agencies need to be beefed up and maybe we need some more dedicated personnel.

But what really caught my eye was one of those debate articles in which a for and against position was given on whether collateral debt obligations have any social value. That article was in the New York Times. It was referring to so-called synthetic CDOs that play into the Goldman Sachs controversy.

Without getting into all the technicalities, the one side suggested that they were an innovation with no social value and should not be allowed. And that in fact they were partly responsible for causing the meltdown in the housing market.

But the other side argued that innovations, such as CDOs, are not the culprit. Instead, the culprit is a lack of regulation and the expectation that if things really go wrong, the government will bail people out.

Well that was my quick interpretation of it anyway. If I have misrepresented the arguments, I still basically believe what I’ve said. I know next to nothing — well more accurately, nothing, about CDOs themselves, but I would think most people agree there needs to be at least a modicum of regulation for financial markets to be fair and work for everyone and thus have utility for society, other than to be just crooked gambling casinos. And people who know they stand to lose everything (with no Uncle Sam to bail them out) will likely put a lot more care into what they do, be they buyer or seller.

P.s.

Indications from all the latest financial news seems to be that some type of recovery from this Great Recession is taking place. And some may tout this as vindication for the bailouts. But I am not sure but what things would have recovered anyway. A lot of time is wasted in bailout efforts, because if nothing else, the capitalists have to figure out how to game that system. There is always capital out there, but it wants to know what the rules are. When you monkey with the system, some of that capital lies idle waiting for a sign as to what the new rules will be. From what I have read one of the greatest things Franklin Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 30s was to relieve human suffering. But despite his activism in the financial sector it took nearly a decade and finally World War II and the demand it put on the economic system for production to get the economy going.

While I would never want war to be the answer anyway, today’s modern methods of fighting war seem to be more of a drag on the economy overall.

P.s. P.s.

And isn’t it strange that the American car company that did not take the bailout money, Ford, leads the pack now?

While the bailouts may in the long run have helped GM and Chrysler, they set a bad precedent for business. What seems to be saving all American auto makers now is that they are reportedly doing everything to be competitive, including taking advantage of bad publicity suffered by Toyota for either its safety failures or its lack of or slow response to customer complaints, or all of the above. I think the American auto companies for the most part and for too long shorted customers on real quality and longevity in favor of glitz and planned obsolescence and settled for a high-priced niche market, rather than compete with the foreign companies head on. They seem to be back in the game. And it doesn’t hurt that Ford pickups have such a loyal following.

The Goldman Sachs saga: hedging is one thing, swindling is another…

The details of the unfolding Goldman Sachs story are somewhat complicated, but the general scenario of the whole housing market collapse that led to the Great Recession and the Goldman Sachs involvement is simple to grasp.

Led by the high rollers on Wall Street and politicians who supported everyone owning their own house and making it work for them so none of us would ever have to do real work again, millions were induced to buy homes that were too expensive for their own incomes.

This all made a lot of money for a lot of people, to include the lenders (several layers of them since mortgages were bundled and sold as investment) and some borrowers who were quick enough to flip their homes in time.

This could not last forever, but not to worry for some of those connected with Goldman Sachs. While they were selling mortgage-backed securities they were secretly making bets that the housing market would fail (via the procedure of what is called “short selling” — the very securities they were selling).

Now it is not uncommon in business and in fact is considered prudent to hedge your position.

I recall attending a meeting a few decades ago when cattle ranchers were being introduced to the commodities market. They were told that they could lock in a price for their feeder cattle by buying cattle futures as a hedge. The upside would be they would know what the price would be before they committed all the money needed to get their cattle to the selling point. The downside would be that if the price of cattle suddenly spiked at the time of sale, they would have any profit shaved by the difference between the futures price they had agreed to and the newer, higher price.

And certainly securities traders and other investors have all kinds of ways to hedge bets. But hedging is one thing, swindling is another.

The problem, as I see it, is when the actions taken by traders goes beyond hedging and actually unfairly distorts the market to the gain of those who caused the distortion and the loss to unwitting investors.

And there is certainly a conflict of interest when an outfit, such as Goldman Sachs, is both trading something for its own gain and selling the same thing to a client. 

Above all the real problem is when all these games and sleights of hand affect the whole U.S. economy — that is when there is a real public interest in all of this.

To be sure, much of what is taking place in the Capitol Hill hearings is grandstanding by legislators to make themselves look good and the Wall Street folks look bad (so they, the legislators, will look good).

Thee is no doubt need for some improved regulation.  We certainly need protections against the gaming of the system. But I’m sure that there is a danger of over regulation. It’s better to enforce the laws already on the books than to create more laws that will just introduce more expense into the whole process — that expense always eventually paid out of the pockets of working Americans one way or the other.

P.s.

And then there is this conflict of interest between our federal government and Wall Street.  President George W. Bush appointed Henry Paulson Secretary of the Treasury. Paulson had been CEO of Goldman Sachs. Isn’t it strange that Goldman Sachs was able to make money at the beginning of the fall of the housing market while others were losing and then had the good sense to become a bank holding company so it could get in on the taxpayer-funded bank bailout that was promoted by Paulson?

Lessons of My Lai just never took hold

I watched the documentary on the 1968 My Lai massacre on PBS Monday night and had the feeling that I had seen it all before, but it was compelling nonetheless.

American soldiers wantonly murdered unarmed Vietnamese women and children and old men and others — hundreds of them.

Americans are not supposed to commit such atrocities.

Of course we did this in our own country to the American Indians.

There are a lot of explanations for what happened or why it happened, but few of them hold up.

What good excuse would you have for killing obviously unarmed women and children and others?

But it seems these things happen in war — always have, always will.

The thing that disturbs me the most about such incidents, other than the human suffering itself, is the fact that the higher ups seldom if ever get in trouble. In this case no one really got into trouble over it, high or low.

The evidence seems clear that the chain of command supported what went on at My Lai and if they did not know what was going on, then that would be their fault too.

According to comments in the documentary, there was ongoing abuse of civilians even before the incident.

As to the individuals who took part, that is the soldiers on the ground, I have some sympathy or understanding for those who may have fired into the bush or at adult males in the distance before they knew they were just innocent (or at least unarmed) villagers.

From what we know now, the soldiers were basically told they were going into enemy territory and that they were not to leave anyone alive.

But when it comes to coming face to face with obviously innocents (especially women and children and old men), I just can’t go there. I don’t see how anyone can do this.

I do understand the quandary soldiers find themselves in when it comes to the idea that they do not have to follow illegal orders. While it is obviously illegal to be ordered to kill innocent people, the way the system of military justice works is that the burden of proof is on the poor soldier who chooses not to follow an illegal order. If the system gangs up against him, which would likely be the case, he would not stand a chance.

Given the fact, as brought out in the documentary, that the American public made its feelings known that it did not want one of the main culprits, one Lt. William Calley, who was accused of giving orders that resulted in the atrocity, punished, what chance would a lone soldier have if he had refused to follow the orders to shoot everything that moved?

(Of course the public support for Calley was over the fact as they saw it that he was simply an officer who had to make decisions in the confusion of war and that if you start sending officers and soldiers to jail for killing people in a war then we could never be successful in a military operation.)

Well, anyway, My Lai is ancient history almost. But what I really got from all of this is that it is futile and dangerous to impose ourselves into the internal struggles of other nations. We end up doing terrible things and make enemies in the process.

We went into Afghanistan supposedly to go after forces that attacked us on 9/11 and now nearly a decade later we have imposed ourselves into an internal struggle and are killing civilians in the process.

We just never learn, do we?

P.s.

Anyone who has been in the military, or even in a big organization, can probably tell you that the way things often run is that higher ups tell you to do something but at the same time let you know that if things go wrong they will swear they never had anything to do with it, but you have to go along with the program or face the consequences — you lose either way.

Environmental concerns — all I know is what I read in the papers…

One of the initial reports I heard on the latest offshore oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (a giant oil platform explosion) was from a so-called expert who assured everyone all was fine and there was no sign of a major oil spill (and, oh, thank heavens it was a certified oil industry expert instead of some kooky environmentalist or left-wing , non-scientifically-educated reporter talking, needlessly worrying us all about an environmental calamity).

Well that was late last week, I guess.

Now I just read that as the result of this same oil rig explosion a thousand barrels of crude oil are spilling into the ocean each day. That’s got to be costly and it cannot be good for the marine environment.

(Eleven platform crew members were still unaccounted for and presumed dead.)

The good news, if there is any, is that it is believed that since the whole thing is far enough out to sea, crews have more time than they otherwise might to contain the spill.

We’ve had bad spills before and they have done terrible environmental damage, but the world goes on, and to some extent nature comes back, and I presume the attitude of many is that such is the cost of survival in modern society.

And then there are those who claim that those who are concerned about environmental degradation of the planet are just alarmists or people who are against progress and who would, in fact, like to take us all back to the Stone Age.

Well, I don’t consider myself in that category, but I am concerned about the environment, and I can say right here I would just as soon there be no offshore oil drilling and certainly no more started — but I am reasonably sure there will be, even if this newest incident has dealt a blow to the cause of drill baby drill. Just before the latest catastrophe President Obama had proposed consideration of limited new offshore drilling, no doubt for political purposes as much as his perceived need of offshore oil.

I’m not a scientist and even though I have a four-year college degree my education was fairly light on hard science. So really all I know is what I read in the papers, so to speak. I have to depend upon the interpretations, primarily written by journalists who get information from scientists, directly and indirectly.

And it only seems logical that when educated folks are studying the unknown, if they are truly being objective they are likely to come up with varying interpretations of the data they have collected and one researcher’s data might not match another’s.

But over time, if everyone stays objective, it seems only logical that some common patterns will be noticed.

At some point there has to be a general consensus among scientists. The generally accepted story has been that the majority of scientists worldwide believe in the phenomenon of global warming that seems to be caused or at least greatly exacerbated by the actions of man.

Now some scientists, we are told, do not follow that line. But I have assumed or at least suspected that many of them are in the employ of industry groups who always fight environmental regulations.

Within the last year or so I have been reading reports that in some cases that some scientists who promote the theory of global warming have been caught faking data or purposely misinterpreting it. One motivation might be that even though they actually believe in global warming, it is easier to get continued funding for study if you can spice up the dire predictions a little. Or global warming detractors would have you believe that it is all a hoax and dishonest researchers are just eating up research grants.

A seemingly straight-forward opinion (opinion, that’s important) piece by a scientist I read in the Wall Street Journal the other day flat out claimed that there is no solid scientific evidence of global warming.

So who do I believe? And do I try to get my own personal count on how many scientists think one thing and how many the other? And do I personally sift through all the data (you know I’m not going to do that and neither are you)? I would not likely be able to interpret the data and would not know how accurate it was or the veracity of those who collected it.

A lot of people have a prejudice in this matter. They see environmentalism as too costly and a threat to jobs and just a plain waste of time.

Personally I would like to have clean air to breathe and an all-around healthy environment and I would like to see the survival of the planet and mankind.

I don’t subscribe to the theory that the only way we can keep employed and feeding ourselves is to foul our nest. It just does not make sense to me.

But I have to depend upon the experts who look at the facts in an objective manner.

Cooking the books to get research dollars under the guise of objective study or simply writing the things the way industry wants it (no costly regulations) is not the kind of expert advice that seems worth anything to me.

(You have to know that the same industrialists who would buy phony research to lobby against environmental regulations would demand the most objective information they could get when making their own business decisions, such as where to drill for oil or dig for coal.)

The best the layperson can do is read as much as he or she can and stay objective and do whatever seems to be called for on a personal basis.

P.s.

“Global warming“, some have noted, should have been labeled “climate change”, as it is sometimes now, because that phraseology is easier to understand, because, as I understand it, global warming can cause warm weather in some places that have been cold and cold weather in some places that have been warm and rain in dry areas and drought in rainy areas.

P.s. P.s.

Come to think of it, I don’t have to entirely depend upon what I read in the papers — I have (we all have) seen or otherwise experienced pollution first hand, such as smog, dirty rivers and lakes and other filthy waterways, as well as garbage strewn all over.

When we intervene in others’ business murder can result…

Just saw on the New York Times website that PBS is supposed to run a documentary entitled “My Lai”, about the massacre by American soldiers of hundreds of unarmed villagers in 1968 during the Vietnam War.

It’s supposed to be on tonight (Monday) — check your local listings. I certainly plan to watch if I can.

To some it may seem like just a terrible aberration or something that just happens in the fog of war.

Well, it does happen. We are doing it today in Afghanistan and have done it in Iraq, although perhaps not on such a grand scale (unless you count the totals).

My Lai, from all accounts, was rather up close and personal — troops mowing down women and children (babies) and others with automatic weapons fire.

There were too many soldiers involved in the My Lai incident for it to be simply blamed on a deviant or two.

The Nazis did such things in World War II out of pure hatred and some terrible programmed group-think thing.

From what I have read over the years, My Lai was kind of the result of fear and frustration out of losing fellow soldiers to booby traps and a largely unseen enemy firing out of the jungle and the reasonable suspicion that villagers were either Viet Cong guerillas themselves (although the babies could not have been) or were aiding and abetting the enemy. And their command also instilled a mentality to kill first and ask questions later (and right or wrong, in the interest of survival that was probably necessary to some extent — killing women and children and other innocents still not excusable though).

When soldiers are sent to a strange land to intervene in an internal struggle (notwithstanding outside involvement of other belligerents or wider world implications) terrible things result.

That’s a good reason not to commit our troops to fight internal struggles that should be left up to the locals.

It’s kind of like the local cops going out on a domestic disturbance call. The husband is beating the wife (or visa versa), but when it’s all said and done the unhappy couple both beat up on the cops.

If we could just go back to ignoring Wall Street…

Before the Great Recession and way back before 401K retirement plans, I think the general public attitude toward what transpired on Wall Street was it was just some strange money game with arcane rules that no one really needed to know about anyway.

But 401Ks were tied to the stock market so that drew a little more interest — but not as much as one might think.

But as the years progressed and technology was introduced things began to move more quickly and the boys and girls on Wall Street came up with new and improved ways of making a quick buck, all based on securities, to include traditional shares in corporations called stocks (which are a form of securities), and even things such as “mortgage backed securities” or “collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)”.

Mixed in with all of this, the practice of taking out what had been called second mortgages went from something one did in near shame or desperation to something people did almost as a status symbol (see how much I can borrow with my assets). The euphemism “home equity loan” came into use.

And along with all of this there was this ongoing effort by liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans and real estate people and lenders to promote the idea that everyone should have their own home.

But in the past in order to do that folks often had to scrimp and save for years and years just to make a down payment. And as inflation made home values rise, many people found it hopeless to ever save enough money to buy a home or even be able to make the necessary monthly payments on a mortgage.

And then came the government programs that made it possible for people to get into homes for virtually nothing down.

That would not be such a problem as long as folks could at least make their monthly mortgage payment, but people who do not have money to put down just might not be able to be counted upon to make monthly payments over the long haul.

There is much difference of opinion over what originally caused the housing boom or bubble and no doubt there are many factors involved.

But the housing bubble created such a panic in home buying that people who did not have money could not only get into a house, they did not have to worry about making payments because they could actually sell the house they never bought at a profit and “buy” a bigger one.

And along with all of this came the adjustable rate mortgage. Get in at a cheap interest rate and then by the time the interest rates went up, you’d be so rich in equity that you’d be able to afford it.

And then at some point things got so crazy that the nation’s whole economy became dependent upon consumer spending (much of it based on home equity loans).

Manufacturing declined as part of the economy, while importing gadgets from overseas and making money off of entertainment and services and on investing in other investments rather than tangible things became the engine of the economy.

Along with all of this was a lot of fraud — not all on Wall Street.

And then the bubble burst.

By this time, while most people still did not really understand Wall Street, nearly everyone was paying attention.

But I think even many who should have understood what was going on did not, to include possibly George W. Bush and Barack Obama. I mean George W. had an MBA degree and Brack Obama was intelligent.

Even many or most of the senior investment people did not really understand it all. They were outmaneuvered by some younger whippersnappers who threw all notions or pretenses of ethics and even normally accepted business principles out the window. They were aided by some math experts who using logarithm formulas designed investment vehicles called derivatives that they claimed were so sophisticated and revolutionary that they could spread out risk to such a degree that one could not lose.

While the various schemes involving derivatives were certainly complex and clever, to a large extent they seem to have amounted to not much more than a modern variation of the old Ponzi scheme.

Most people would probably be better off to go back to their lives and forget about Wall Street, if they could.

If individuals invested closer to home and if our government catered more to its citizens than Wall Street we would be better off.

But if you want something for nothing, Wall Street would like to help:

Somewhere I read today that the Goldman Sachs attitude in selling questionable securities was that people wanted them and the rule is: “if the ducks quack, feed them”.

While illegal immigration should be curtailed, new Arizona law questionable…

Let’s be honest: The new illegal alien bill just signed by Arizona’s governor means that law officers in that state are now supposed to detain Mexicans (or Hispanics)  — probably most identifiable by brown skin — they suspect might be illegal aliens.

I doubt they would spend much time detaining suspected aliens from Canada or Eastern Europe — if for no other reason, how would they readily identify them?

Of course Hispanics who are U.S. citizens have no need to worry — they can just pull their birth certificates out of their pockets. All of us U.S. citizens carry around our birth certificates (well maybe Barack Obama doesn’t — I could not resist that one), don’t we?

Kind of sounds like an old Nazi movie:

“Your papers please”.

Having written these first few paragraphs, I have to admit that I have no problem with police checking immigration status as a matter of course when a crime is committed, but to have a law in the United States of America that seems to allow and in fact command local police officers to single individuals out just on their suspicion that they might be here illegally seems to me to run counter to our ideals of freedom of movement, especially since legal citizens are sure to be affected. And since the only likely people to feel the effects are one ethnic group, it seems to me the law is discriminatory.

And already the new law — not really in effect yet — has drawn criticism from the President of the United States of America, and legal experts say it is probably unconstitutional because, among other things, states do not have jurisdiction in immigration matters.

Ironically, this comes at a time when as I understand it illegal immigration from Mexico had decreased due to the Great Recession.

But the flood of illegal immigrants has not been completely halted. And the millions of illegal immigrants, the vast majority of them crossing over from Mexico, costs U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in social welfare expenditures (even though illegals often do pay taxes) and results in unfair competition for jobs and a downward pressure on wages for American workers.

The federal government needs to enforce existing immigration laws, and it should assist local law enforcement agencies in detaining illegal aliens when as a matter of course they come though their systems.

But local police should not become immigration cops. Even before the new Arizona bill was signed some local Arizona cops were concerned as to how they were to carry out the demands of the new law and that it would increase their workload and take them away from duties and investigations they were already performing.

More irony:

A rancher on the Arizona-Mexican border was recently killed by an illegal alien and that is what gave impetus to passage of the law. But it is farmers and other employers who lure illegals across the border with offers of employment.

Still more irony. Some Mexican-American truckers who haul from Nogales (on the border) to LA reportedly planned to conduct a work stoppage in protest. But having worked as a truck driver myself on that route and elsewhere I can tell you the average truck driver (especially non-Hispanics, I suppose) would say: “it’s about time they went after illegal aliens“.

I agree. But stopping people on the street because their skin is of a darker shade seems to me to be unfair, if only because U.S. citizens would likely end up being hassled and deprived of their right of free movement and freedom from being harassed by police.

Nothing is stopping U.S. immigration authorities from continuing their usual patrols and investigations in the usual and legal manner.

(I do think those immigration check points at various points north of the border on the interstates do not seem to be terribly efficient — although they may be effective. I mean why is it necessary to have so many officers — a half dozen or more at each checkpoint — standing around to simply wave through about 99 percent of the vehicles and only stopping a few? The dark skin folks wearing sombreros on their heads and serapes over their shoulders, I presume.)

Why should farmers or anyone else have a right to cheap labor?

I’ve plowed this ground before, so to speak, but I have to ask the question: why do farmers feel they are entitled to a source of cheap labor? And maybe, for that matter, it is only fair to ask at the same time, why does the U.S. consumer feel entitled to groceries based on cheap labor?

Consumers would howl in protest if illegal aliens took their jobs, but they would also likely complain, more than they already do, about any rise in the cost of groceries attributed to a shortage of cheap labor, primarily from Mexico.

And I know that farmers would have you believe that it is not so much the need for cheap labor as it is the need for labor period, because — we all know the standard argument — Americans will not do stoop labor or climb up ladders to pick fruit and so on.

Actually, there is some truth to that argument. Although once upon a time U.S. citizens, to include, pardon the expression , white people, did all kinds of field labor, along with Mexican immigrants and of course non-whites, for the most part those days are in the past.

In the 1960s there were television documentaries and at least one book about the abuses inflicted upon migrant workers and then under President Johnson’s Great Society programs people were able to get out of migrant labor, even if the result was that new generations would come along and not only not do migrant work, but not do much of anything.

Now partly in response to a shortage of field labor much of agriculture that had not already been mechanized has become so.

Some examples that I am aware of first hand: plums (or prunes as we call them in the area where they are grown in California, even when they are fresh on the tree before they are dried) began to be harvested by machines rather than pickers crawling around in the dirt under the trees (or hand picking them off the tree as was done for some varieties). Same thing with walnuts and almonds.

Even wine grapes can now be harvested by a machine.

But many things, such as many fresh fruits and some vegetables, still defy complete mechanization.

If employers were required to pay higher wages and offer better working conditions and if welfare and unemployment benefit regulations were really enforced, there might not be such a shortage of domestic labor.

And in some cases we might just have to get along without some things — I think I posted this one before, but you know, we could probably get along without iceberg lettuce. We might find it more practical to grow other types of crops that lend themselves more to mechanization.

The demand for hard physical and often stoop labor continues strong, particularly in big agriculture — which is not ma and pa on the farm feeding the chickens and slopping the hogs and milking the cow and hoeing the beans.

During World War II, what with so much of the labor force off to fight overseas, there was the Bracero program in which Mexican men came to work the fields. Many of them were cheated out of their wages.

That program ended in 1964. But Mexicans and others, most of them illegal, have streamed across the border to meet the farm labor demand (and of course the demand for other labor as well).

The agricultural industry got used to using workers without proper authorization, illegal aliens.

Think I mentioned this in one of my previous posts, but I remember an old eccentric woman who ran a kind of a rag of a small town newspaper back in the 70s. She did not mince words. She said right on her front page that her little city’s (area’s) economy depended upon illegal aliens to pick the local olive crop.

At the time, most people, particularly growers, did not admit that in public.

But I see we’ve come a long way. In the April 22 edition of the Wall Street Journal via a letter to the editor, the president of Western Growers, of Irvine, Ca., calls for the support of proposed federal legislation, the so-called agJOBS bill, that would allow farmers to hire illegals, who under certain conditions could eventually get their citizenship.

In a separate letter which I read on the web, California U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, a sponsor of the bill, says farmers are going out of business and can’t compete with the rest of the world for the lack of labor.

(And while I was writing this I heard an item on the news that Stockton, California’s Asparagus Festival is being held amid a vast reduction in asparagus plantings which has resulted from competition from imports.   Add1: It occurs to me that the smaller scale — less or no outside labor required — locally-grown sustainable farming method could replace some of that lost market. )

Hey, I don’t want to see anyone go out of business and I know when farmers cut back it has a drastic impact on the economy because of all the related jobs that go with agriculture, and I don’t want my groceries to cost any more than they do. But I don’t feel good about saving money by importing cheap labor. And why should the agricultural industry get a special privilege to import cheap labor? Actually I guess even high tech and other industries import relatively cheap or cheaper labor through special emergency visa programs.

I’d rather see employers be forced to pay decent wages. When they are not, the public has to step in and pay the extra costs through social welfare programs that provide for the poor working class, to include legal and illegal aliens.

And in this day and age, working men are not as willing — and nor should they be — to leave their families behind to be part of guest worker programs.

Letting employers import cheaper labor depresses the wages for everyone and brings the national standard of living down.

The argument, even outside the farm labor issue, always seems to be we can’t afford to pay decent wages, which is another way of saying we can’t afford to let other people live as well as we do (even though we expect their labor).