Conservatives Growl About the President's Immigration Plan

President Bush finally outlined a coherent vision for immigration reform in a speech last night that was broadcast nationwide. The President acknowledged that our current immigration system is broken. He outlined five elements of his plan to fix it:

• “[T]he United States must secure its borders.”


• “[W]e must create a temporary worker program.”


• “[W]e need to hold employers to account for the workers they hire.”


• We must provide a meaningful path to citizenship for “illegal immigrants who have roots in our country…”


• “[W]e must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one Nation out of many peoples.”

The President gave a few details about each of these points, asked for civility and reason in the immigration debate, and called on Congress to pass legislation (this month) to enable his goals to be realized. The first four bullet points are understandable, but the fifth point is a bit fuzzy. What the President had to say about that point would be hard to disagree with:

“The success of our country depends upon helping newcomers assimilate into our society, and embrace our common identity as Americans. Americans are bound together by our shared ideals, an appreciation of our history, respect for the flag we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language. English is also the key to unlocking the opportunity of America. English allows newcomers to go from picking crops to opening a grocery … from cleaning offices to running offices … from a life of low-paying jobs to a diploma, a career, and a home of their own. When immigrants assimilate and advance in our society, they realize their dreams ... they renew our spirit ... and they add to the unity of America.”

As Victor Davis Hanson said, “The president's comprehensive proposals include something for everyone.” That is, the plan seems to address concerns by people on all sides of the issue. But many conservatives are less than happy with the plan (see here, here, here and here). These people are not simply unhappy with the plan; they’re ticked off at George W. Bush. They don’t hate Bush viscerally like the angry Left, but they are sorely disappointed. Check out phrases like:

• “President Bush has a huge disadvantage when talking about immigration reform: He is not credible.” –George Borjas


• “The proposal has no teeth... There is nothing in it to force compliance or to penalize non-compliance.” –Bob Lonsberry


• “Mr. Bush’s primetime televised speech Monday night amounted to more empty words.” –James R. Edwards, Jr.


• “The president’s insistence on a “comprehensive” approach was code for "let’s water down anything by way of serious enforcement."” –James G. Gimpel


• “[G]uest-workers will only perpetuate the problem by supplying a continual unassimilated, low-paid, and ultimately volatile underclass.” –Victor Davis Hanson
  · “Under the president’s plan, the more flagrantly you’ve broken the law, the bigger your reward.” –Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)


• “[T]he Bush team thinks that the American public will not be so quick to see through the bait-and-switch bromides.” –Heather Mac Donald


• “I'm confused as to how the President can one day confidently call for ending tyranny in the world, and the next day say it is unrealistic to catch and deport those who have come to this country uninvited - some of whom are gang members and criminals.” –Tom Kilgannon


• “President Bush has a bold new approach to immigration enforcement: He wants to police the Mexican border with symbolism.” –Rich Lowry

I suspect that if the President intended to shore up faltering conservative support, he only succeeded in further alienation. Of course, the President has a much broader constituency than strong conservatives. And not all conservatives are on the side of austere immigration policy. Indeed, many religious conservatives either have mixed emotions about immigration or favor open borders. (David Klinghoffer tries to win these people over by arguing here that the biblical precedent for naturalization of immigrants requires “serious, challenging, and difficult preconditions.”)

So, was the President merely pandering to conservatives last night? Was his speech mere political posturing? Or was it more insidious? Was he, as some on the Left argue (and some on the Right agree), simply purveying an evil plan to destroy our country (either by design or witlessness)? Or was he actually trying to do what he honestly thinks is best for the country?

I think the latter case is probably more likely. The President was putting forth a plan that he actually thinks is best for the country and is also politically viable. Of course, being a politician, he had to mix in some pandering and posturing for good measure.

Let’s look at the evidence. As governor of Texas, Bush had to deal with illegal immigration issues all of the time. He came to office intending to make immigration reform one of the legacies of his presidency. His administration started working this issue early in his presidency, but Bush’s plan was sidetracked by 9/11 and its subsequent repercussions. Now Bush is getting back to his original plan.

The President clearly doesn’t buy the standard conservative hard line on immigration. He doesn’t think it’s best for the country, but he realizes that he needs some support from conservatives, so he has thrown them a few bones. But they’re not blind to what is happening, and they’re not satisfied with dry bones, so they’re upset.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, not just with regard to immediate legislation, but also over the next couple of decades. Former Bush advisor Lawrence B. Lindsey (who is also father to three immigrants) worries here that we will miss our generational chance to get immigration right, since the issue seems to come up about once every 20 years. If you read Lindsey’s article, you might be interested to contemplate Andrew Natsios’ concern here that our embassies are becoming impenetrable fortresses that keep potential good immigrants out.

Lindsey notes that the INS is currently too understaffed and under funded to deal with our present legal immigrant load of less than 1 million people annually. The idea that we could additionally process 12 million people with our current apparatus is ludicrous. Lindsey worries that current legislation does nothing to address the service’s shortfalls. Massive expansion of the agency would be required, but that would create a whole new set of bureaucratic problems that would mean that it probably wouldn’t be ready to fully operate for half a decade or more.

I think the President is right to put the immigration issue on the table, even if it turns out differently than he hopes. The opportunity to even deal with this issue is only made possible by the fact that we have an upcoming election. Everyone clamors for the process to be free of “exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain.” –President Bush. But I think we all realize that the process is inherently political and will not escape standard political tactics.

I simply hope that the result will be something that will really work for the country. What we have today is a joke.

Our Superiority Complex

The concept of the nation-state has been in flux throughout history. It is really only since WWII that the entire globe has pretty much become divided into what we think of today as nation-states, which have defined geographic borders and centralized governmental control. Exceptions certainly exist, but they are considered violations of the norm. The United Nations was formed to provide a formalized venue for nation-states to interact with each other on a broad basis.

A nation-state is more than simply a geographic area. Various lists of common elements that define a nation-state frequently include common culture, common language, common mythos, etc. But every such list I have seen carries at least one element that is not universally applicable. I think it would not be terribly inaccurate to say that modern nation-states each have a defined geographic area and a belief in the nation by enough people to enforce its recognition. By this definition, nation-states have been around for a long time. But they have not always been the norm. Only when they became more general were institutions formed to aid with inter-national interaction.

I was born into a world of nation-states, so history sometimes seemed strange to me when it discussed instances where this concept was not common. It took me years to understand cities and regions that regularly shifted alliances, small localities that acted like semi-autonomous nations, and nomadic groups that were not tied to a particular chunk of real estate.

WWII showed the world that nationalism could be extremely evil, but the war paradoxically also strengthened the institution of the nation-state. Many nation-states developed in answer to the demise of European colonialism. But the evil of nationalistic fascism sewed the seeds of eventual weakening of the nation-state.

Feeling Guilty
Shelby Steele contends here that the demise of the once-widely-accepted thesis of white supremacy has so shocked Western culture that mostly-Caucasian nations equivocate about anything that could remotely be construed as appearing to demonstrate white supremacy. Everyone now recognizes the stunning immorality of racial supremacy, and the cultural heirs of those that once perpetrated it now act in everlasting penance for the sins of their fathers.

Mr. Steele argues that this self-flagellation prevents the U.S. from implementing a coherent immigration policy along its southern border, while having no problems creating an endless nightmare for Western European immigrants. He says that it prevents the West from effectively engaging in any military action with any less-white nation, for fear of appearing too superior.

I think Mr. Steele makes an interesting point. But I also think his theory could be extended to just about any cultural moré that suggests superiority, justifiable or not. Let’s just call it superiority guilt. While there were dissenters in the U.S. during WWII, the country largely banded together in one long, glorious push of nationalism. We intended to be decisive, and we were. We made mistakes, oh so many costly mistakes, but these were all seen in the context of achieving a greater good. There was nothing we could not accomplish.

But the ugliness of the nationalism we saw in Germany and Italy gave us pause. Later, as we fought the Cold War, we saw the awfulness of imposed nationalism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Privacy did not exist. Personal expression was not permitted. Only after the Soviet breakup and the re-emergence of Eastern Europe did we discover how horrid it all was.

Beating Ourselves Up
We have become so determined not to repeat the mistakes of nationalism gone awry that there has been a great anti-nationalism push. The idea is that nationalism of any kind is bad. And patriotism is considered part and parcel of nationalism, so it’s on the outs as well. Oh sure, there was a wild flare-up of nationalism and patriotism in the wake of 9/11, but that has all pretty much subsided, leaving us feeling somewhat vulnerable.

We know we need security, but we constantly shudder about the least thing that could in any way make our nation look remotely repressive to individual expression or disrespectful of personal privacy. So we now tolerate and celebrate the outlandish and the abnormal. Also, as Mark Steyn notes here, we demand better intelligence and allow invasive searches of airline passengers so that we don’t have another 9/11, but we schizophrenically rage about government computers looking at our phone bills cleansed of personal data.

If we were to fight WWII given our current culture, we would not win. Victor Davis Hanson notes here that we didn’t quibble much about the mistakes made in WWII that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. But now our daily dosage of self-humiliation about Iraq prevents us from pursuing a decisive course there. This ethos is evident in everything we do, including the leaders we elect.

Good Nationalism
When I was in 7th grade toward the end of the Vietnam War, my junior high school faculty became very concerned about the students’ apparent lack of adequate patriotism. They worked with a National Guard company to provide us a three-day experience living in the military totalitarian State of Triangula. The military took control of the school one morning. The commander issued a new set of rules that included imposed order, no talking whatsoever without direct permission, and no displays of American patriotism. All American Flags were replaced with State of Triangula flags.

You might call this tactic highly manipulative, but it had the desired effect. By the end of the third day many of us had become rebels. I was sentenced to hard labor in the library for a display of patriotism. Students smuggled American Flags into the school and secretly organized Pledge of Allegiance ceremonies. At the close of the third day, “U.S.” military troops came and retook control of the school and put the faculty back in charge. The soldiers hauled the Triangulite troops away while the student body cheered loudly. We were proud to be Americans that day.

The interesting thing is that I later discovered that the whole exercise had been designed by one of the teachers as part of her doctoral thesis. She later became a professor of anthropology. I had always considered her quite liberal and assumed she was anti-war, but it turned out that she wanted her students to be as proud of her country as she was.

Today it’s still easy to find people that are proud to be Americans, but a significant number of our citizens either do not feel this way, or only feel it in a sort of lukewarm way. Many feel guilty that we have so much compared with other nations. It seems we are obsessed with pointing out our nation’s flaws and with emphasizing anything we perceive that another nation might do better than us. I do not deny the flaws and the need to address them, but some of us look at a handful of bugs on the tree and see only bugs but no tree. Many of us are so overcome with superiority guilt that we can’t even stomach the idea of borders or national sovereignty. It’s not just the U.S.; Europe has gone so far as to create the European Union, which is meant to engulf its various nation members.

Toward One World
Is the nation-state on the decline? Has it hit the high point in its life cycle? Indeed, many would welcome its demise. They see a new border-free world community where all have equal opportunities. That’s a wonderful utopian idea. But how should it be pursued? One idea is to slowly dissolve borders, allowing cultures to blend. Some people behind this theory promote diversity as perhaps the highest virtue. However, this method seems to require the dilution of principles that give America its strength, and there are no examples I know of where unilaterally dissolving borders has worked well, so that the chances of achieving the desired utopian result are highly dubious.

Another theory is to demonstrate leadership and export to fundamentals of American ideals around the globe in any possible degree to any nation willing to accept and adopt them. Promoters of this theory suggest that reality dictates that while utopia is unlikely to ever be achieved, many elements of it can make life better for people around the globe. Of course, this theory requires the acceptance of American exceptionalism, the idea that the U.S. is actually superior to other nations in many ways. While this idea seems to be increasingly abhorrent to some Americans, many people around the world recognize it as fact, even if they are jealous of the U.S for it.

Of course there are other theories as well (including the theory of shoving our ideals down others’ throats), but that’s all I’ve got time for today.

What Should We Do?
In reality, even the most unabashed America-haters recognize American exceptionalism, even if they couch it in unflattering phrases. The question, I suppose, is should we feel guilty about it? Should we feel guilty that the U.S. offers the most freedom, peace, and opportunity of any country on the planet? Will that guilt help bring these virtues to others? And regardless of whether we feel guilty about it or not, how can we help those less fortunate receive the blessings we’ve got? I suspect the answer to that has little to do with beating up on ourselves or with relinquishing our sovereignty.

Note to Utah: Forget the Fourth House Seat for Now

I have never been a fan of the plan to give Utah a fourth seat in the House of Representatives in exchange for giving Washington, D.C. an actual voting seat in the House. This issue has reared its head before, sometimes with support from Utah’s politicians, and it’s back once again per this Washington Post article (hat tip: Utah Policy Daily).

Here’s the deal. The Constitution (Article I, Section 2) requires seats in the House of Representatives to be apportioned according to population. The apportionment is reallocated every 10 years according to census numbers. The number of seats fluctuated until the Apportionment Act of 1911 set the total number of seats at 435. (This number was temporarily changed to 437 from 1959-1963.)

This means that every time we get new census numbers some readjustment takes place, with some states losing seats and some states gaining seats, depending on population shifts. Given that understanding, it is easy to see why census methodology is such a hot topic in Congress. States stand to lose or gain seats depending on methods used.

Following the 2000 Census, Utah was hoping to pick up a fourth seat in the House, but North Carolina edged Utah out by 856 people. Utah filed suit, claiming that the Census Bureau’s numbers were unfair, citing the fact that it counted North Carolina’s military members serving abroad while failing to count Mormon missionaries temporarily living outside of Utah. When that suit failed, Utah filed a second suit claiming that census takers in North Carolina had erroneously used statistical sampling methods. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against Utah (see here).

Utah has had a craw in its jaw about its lost congressional seat ever since the whole 2000 Census imbroglio. Moreover, others in Congress have openly recognized the perception of injustice. It just seems so frightfully unfair to come so close, but then to fail due to a close call by the referees. But just as victimology ill suits anybody—indeed it is a nasty self-destructive attitude—it is a poor fit for Utahns, who tend to pride themselves on hardiness and self-sufficiency.

On the other side of the coin, the Constitution allows for representatives to be elected to Congress “by the People of the several States…” You get that? Only states. But why should U.S. citizens in Washington, D.C. and in the various U.S. territories be denied representation in Congress by accident of where they live? How incredibly unfair is that?

Well, the answer is that they do get to elect representatives, because Congress long ago recognized this disparity. But the problem is that those representatives have no real voting power. But this injustice has largely been a problem only for Democrats, because the district and the territories always vote for Democrats, so Republicans haven’t been very sympathetic. Let’s face it; national politics is all about power, so why would anyone in Washington, D.C. volunteer to relinquish power?

When Utah lost its bid for a fourth House seat, the Republicans felt the sting, because Utah is fairly reliable at sending Republicans to Congress, and when it doesn’t, it sends Democrats that vote like Republicans. So a fourth seat for Utah would most likely have meant an additional Republican seat.

With both sides sensing injustice, the time seemed right for a compromise. Here’s the plan: expand the number of seats in the House to 437 permanently, let Utah get its fourth seat, and let D.C. have its own actual voting member instead of a mere figurehead. Now doesn’t that sound like a fair plan? It intends to create fairness, but the deal is riddled with problems.

First, the plan is unconstitutional. The Constitution allows only states to have real voting representatives in Congress. It seems unfair to districts and territories, but it’s the law. No doubt the constitutionality of the seat deal would ultimately be challenged. Republicans might feel somewhat secure about this, because Utah would probably keep its seat while Washington, D.C. probably wouldn’t.

Past efforts to circumvent the Constitution have proven to carry unfortunate consequences. If our Constitution is unfair, let’s amend it through the appropriate avenues. Otherwise, let’s live with it. If the states-only provision is so horribly unfair, why has no serious effort been mounted to amend the Constitution to fix it?

My second problem with the deal is that it would require Utah’s fourth seat to be a statewide position rather than being assigned to a geographic division of Utah. Do we really want the equivalent of a third senator? Splitting Utah into four districts would allow citizens to have better representation. It would allow representatives to better focus on the needs of their individual districts. That is the purpose of the House. Do we want one representative that has overlapping representative responsibilities with three others?

We elect senators by statewide election because they are meant to represent the interests of the state equally with the other 49 states. Senators have to cover far more constituents than House members, so they have to diffuse their efforts and message. Doing this in both the House and the Senate partially defeats the purposes of the Founders to allow for more personal representation as well as representation of the state as a whole. I’m not going to get into the issue of gerrymandering districts here. That will have to wait for another day.

My third problem with the deal is that it’s a permanent fix to a temporary problem. In 2010 there will be another census. No one doubts that Utah will accordingly get its fourth House seat in the 2012 election, just six years from now. And Utah will then get to determine for itself how it should be represented, rather than having this determined by some cabal back east.

Yet another problem with the deal is that it would help only Washington, D.C., and it would only do a halfway job of that. Why does the District merit representation in the House, but not in the Senate? Why do Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and other territories not merit similar representation? Once again, if this is a flaw in our Constitution, let’s fix it the right way rather than doing something that in reality is only symbolic.

The Republicans in Congress that are pushing the plan have no clear sense of whether it will ultimately succeed. Unlike past efforts, House leadership has not come out in open opposition to it. I seriously hope that the bill fails and that it fails so miserably that no one will dare bring it up again. I wish this, not because I believe that some citizens are unworthy of congressional representation, but because I think the deal would actually be a raw deal for them, for Utah, and for the country.

Many still think Utah got the short end of the stick in 2000 despite the fact that the law says justice was served. OK, so write it up in the history books and move on. Utah should quit wallowing in victim status. Many think that Washington, D.C. has long had a rotten deal. OK, so quit with the whining already. Pull up your bootstraps and do what it takes to really fix the problem. The citizens of the District and of the nation will be better off for it.

Why are Some Mormons Afraid of an LDS Presidential Candidate?

I’m keeping my options open with an eye toward 2008. Many ideas exist about who will be the eventual Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, but all of these are merely guesses at this point. Eight years ago everyone knew that Al Gore would be the Democratic nominee in 2000, but nobody really had the remotest clue who would get the Republican nod. Four years ago it was not at all clear that John Kerry would finally get the Democratic nomination.

The future may look clear to some, but even the most astute observer cannot possibly comprehend the multitudinous variables between here and there. Even if it were possible to do so, nobody really knows how much weight to ascribe to each variable. Priorities don’t necessarily remain constant between election cycles, so even experts are only giving it their best guess. Who can tell when the lead runner will stumble over a pebble inadvertently dropped on the course that runs through New Hampshire and Iowa?

Conventional wisdom on the GOP side currently has Senator John McCain (R-AZ) heading the list of potential nominees. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has often been rated in one of the next three spots, depending on who is doing the rating and when it is done. Romney has ties to Utah, having successfully rescued the scandal tainted 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He is also a member of the LDS Church, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City.

Ever since Romney began posturing for a presidential run there has been a lot of discussion about what kind of challenges his religion would pose for him. I wrote about this issue three months ago (here). A medical doctor in Iowa runs a pro-Romney blog. He links to an interesting blog called Article6Blog. Its name references the article in the U.S. Constitution containing the clause prohibiting a religious test for any political office. The site is run by an Evangelical Christian and a Mormon. It mainly discusses the challenges Romney faces as a presidential aspirant with respect to his religion.

When the Constitution prohibits a religious test, it means as a matter of government policy rather than as a matter of personal opinion. I strongly disagree with people that think Romney’s religion should disqualify him, but I think they have every right to hold their bigoted opinions and to vote accordingly. The Constitution in no way prohibits this.

Some of the commentary on the Article6Blog by Mormons posits that it would be better if Romney didn’t make it very far because of the potential for damage to their religion caused by negative public opinion. I suppose these folks would feel the same way if Harry Reid decided to run for the Democratic nomination, so my guess is that they are consistent. I simply do not understand this cowering-under-the-bed attitude.

People that believe in New Testament Christianity should feel a duty to live their religion openly and to share it with others. This mandate is constantly reiterated to Mormons by their leaders. Believers certainly can’t carry out this doctrine if they base their actions in the fear of people’s opinions. Would Romney or Reid be where they are today if they constantly lived their lives quailing at the prospect of religious misunderstanding or intolerance?

While Jesus called his followers to preach his gospel to everyone in the world (Mark 16:15), he also told them that they should be prepared to be persecuted for doing so (Matthew 22:22, John 16:1-4). Those that want to profess Christianity—especially the Mormon version of it—without arousing negative opinions remind me of Elder Marion G. Romney’s 1955 BYU speech where he said, “Now there are those among us who are trying to serve the Lord without offending the devil.”

I have to ask the fearful types, what’s the worst that could happen? This isn’t 1838 Missouri. Your opponents aren’t going to come after you with rifles, pitchforks and torches to drive you from your homes. This isn’t 1856 Utah. They aren’t going to call out the military and declare martial law. This isn’t the 1880s. You won’t have the legal goon squads raiding your homes at night.

So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid you’re going to hear someone on the evening news or a radio talk show malign or misrepesent your religion? Are you afraid that MSM outlets and bloggers will do so in print? Afraid a coworker will spew some anti-Mormon slur? Well, whoop-de-doo. What’s the big deal?

If people are going to be religious bigots, so be it. I suppose that’s what you call it when you generally agree with a candidate’s politics and morality, but refuse to vote for him/her based on his/her form of worship. If at some future point a Mormon becomes president and somebody blames some unfortunate national event (or even bad poll numbers) on his/her religion, so be it. It will only expose the nature of those carrying such opinions. I say, bring it on. Dish out your worst. Let’s get it out in the open and deal with it.

I understand the desire to avoid unpleasantries and to have genial relations. We all work to keep our lives as unruffled as is reasonable. But openly wishing for the misfortune of a fellow believer simply to secure comfort for ourselves strikes me as bizarre. If Romney wants to run, I wish him the best. Likewise in the unlikely event that Reid wants to run.

How Not to Win Friends

The day after the pro immigration rallies this week, the Standard Examiner published a guest commentary by someone named Ana Ayala called “Sleeping giant Latinos' awakening inevitable, and here!” The article says that Ms. Ayala “is a first-generation American of Puerto Rican descent, and a second-generation American of Mexican descent.” I would have written about this earlier, but I had to let it sit and simmer so that I could approach the matter rationally.

Ms. Ayala is obviously very proud of her heritage. She quotes some statistics from a University of Utah study about the value of Latinos to the economy in Utah. If you read the study you will discover that the statistics cited were cherry picked to support Ayala’s position. While the study is generally positive, there are some negatives as well. Since the study was designed to improve trade between Utah and Mexico, it goes out of its way to avoid the most negative aspects of the immigration issue in Utah.

But it is not the statistics Ayala cites with which I take exception; it is the overall tone of her commentary. It comes across like the Borg from Star Trek Next Generation. Ayala’s message seems to be, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” She says, “Relax. There's nothing anyone can do about Latinos becoming this country's majority population.” She continues, “Obviously, this train is non-stop and on its way to Latino nirvana! For those of you non-Latinos who like and appreciate us, we welcome you on our train ride.”

Ayala predicts a Latino majority in the U.S. as soon as 2010. While the Latino presence in the U.S. is growing, Ayala’s prediction is beyond preposterous (unless you twist numbers by how you define Latino).

Ayala next runs up the racism flag, claiming that being opposed to illegal immigration is simply a mask for good old-fashioned racism. She claims that “Latinos are constantly being told "go home!"” Then she trots out the argument that Latinos were in this country long before most of the rest of our ancestors, so they somehow have a right to be here, presumably regardless of citizenship status.

She next takes on the English language. To those that want immigrants to speak English she flippantly barks, “Enough already! The future in this country is Spanish, like it or not. If you spout, "Speak English!" I say: "Learn to speak Spanish!" It's the wave of the future, and you're a fool if you don't!"”

Next she sides with President Bush, asserting that Americans ought to be glad that Latinos take American jobs. Like our president, Ayala makes it sound as if every Latino in this country is as honest and hard working as the day is long. Like the president, she makes no mention of the gangsters, drug pushers, smugglers, and sundry other criminals that somehow are so casually included in this fine upstanding population.

Ayala takes on those that argue against illegals using our country’s social services, making the completely unsupportable claim that they do not use these services because that would be illegal.

Finally, Ayala once again touts Latino superiority, saying, “You would do well to do right by Latinos. We will one day be the boss to your sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters.”

I believe Ayala makes two serious errors in her thesis. First, she comes across as strikingly arrogant. This is not simply cultural pride—standing up and shaking your fist at your trials. Rather, it is a claim of superiority based on race. This ugly adornment is just as unbecoming of Latinos as it is of others that have worn it. No one can fault Ayala for her heritage. Indeed, we should all probably hold a special place in our hearts for our individual heritage. But we have discovered by sad experience that serious problems arise when that sentiment leads to a sense of superiority.

Ayala claims that her race and culture will consume all others in the U.S. But she doesn’t merely cite this proposition as a cold statistical possibility; she sticks it in the face of non-Latinos and rubs their noses in it. This is simply not a good way to engender neighborly relations. She comes across like Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on his desk at the U.N. General Assembly in 1960 and yelling in reference to capitalism, “We will bury you!” Today we can see how silly and spurious his prediction was.

Ayala’s second major mistake is that she makes no differentiation between Latinos in general and Latinos in this country illegally. Indeed, she seems to go to great effort to equate the two. This does a great disservice to Ayala’s main point that Latinos play a significant role in this country. It does a greater disservice to immigrants that have done what it takes to be here legally. In one fell swoop she lightly tosses aside the legitimacy of our country’s sovereignty. I do not get the impression that she would so carelessly dismiss the sovereignty of Mexico.

Strangely, Ayala, who seems to have a decent command of the English language, rejects that language in favor of Spanish. In reality, if you want to be successful in this country you must be conversant in English. Many people that want laws requiring English to be our country's only official language want those that are currenly not proficient in English to become proficient so that they can become successful. Bill Cosby got into hot water with some people for boldly proclaiming this doctrine with reference to African-Americans.

Ayala’s commentary has some valid points and in it she tries to address an issue that is very important to Utah and to the nation. However, her in-your-face approach is destined to leave a bad taste in the mouths of non-Latinos. If she intended to engender empathy for Latinos, she has only succeeded in doing the opposite. If her intent was to cause ill feelings toward Latinos, she hit the mark.

I would like everyone, regardless of where they were born or what they look like, to have opportunities similar to what I have been blessed with in life. I would like to be a good neighbor to everyone regardless of surface differences. But neighborliness is a two-way street. Those desiring acceptance should refrain from sticking their fists in their neighbors’ faces and telling them that they’re about to be crushed.

The Feasibility of Alternative Fuels

Every time fuel prices spike there is renewed public interest in alternative fuels. Popular Mechanics has a very interesting article that explores the various potentially feasible automobile fuel replacements. (Hat tip: Tyler at the Wasatch Front) The article also discusses diesel trucks a little bit, but it doesn’t deal at all with energy used by facilities, airplanes, trains, boats, etc. So you won’t see anything about wind, solar, or nuclear power.

PM joins most every other expert I know of in the belief that there is no single solution that can replace oil. The article goes beyond mere laboratory tests to discuss how the various featured fuels work and have the potential of working in real life.

I was glad to see PM consider the issues of money, distribution, and environmental costs. So many times, those that are excited about an alternative fuel gloss over money and distribution, which are the elephants in the living room. I was disappointed to see the issues of replacement and disposal of batteries and fuel cells completely ignored.

The article has a PDF comparison chart that attempts to show the cost and feasibility of driving across the country using the various fuels discussed. I have been watching my electrical bill go up, so I was surprised to see that a fully electric vehicle would be by far the least expensive in fuel cost alone. Of course, since you have to recharge overnight every 100 miles, it could take you months to make the trip. I was also a little shocked to see that it would take a ton of coal to generate the fuel for the trip. No wonder we still have so many coal-fired electrical plants. Coal is cheap.

The article also brought up an interesting point in its discussion of natural gas. It said that the cost of natural gas “is a bargain compared to gasoline,” mainly because of the taxes added to gasoline. Does anyone really think that government would not find a way to get its share of any alternative fuel that comes into broad use? We have to fund the roads we drive on somehow. Politicians aren’t simply going to sit around and watch funding dry up.

One thing is clear from reading this article. Even with high gas prices, we’re not going to experience a massive shift to alternative fuels any time soon.

Why Conservatives are Not Enthusiastic About Bush

It’s no news that President Bush’s poll numbers are in the tank. But it’s not because liberals hate him. They have pretty much always given him very low approval and very high disapproval ratings since before he took office (with the exception of a brief period following 9/11). The only difference there is that a fair number have gone from simply loathing him to hating him more than any other person on the planet.

Rather, Bush’s numbers are low because conservatives are finding increasingly less to approve of and increasingly more to disapprove of. The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg takes issue with the left’s comparison of Bush to Nixon because the elements to which they draw similarities are actually quite dissimilar. Goldberg asserts here, however, that Bush does have other more striking similarities to Nixon, whom he classes as “the last of the New Deal-era liberal presidents.”

“… at the philosophical level, he [Bush] shares the Nixonians' supreme confidence in the power of the state. Bush rejects limited government and many of the philosophical assumptions that underlie that position. He favors instead strong government. He believes, as he said in 2003, that when "somebody hurts, government has got to move." His compassionate conservatism shares with Nixon's moderate Republicanism a core faith that not only can the government love you, but it should spend money to prove its love. Beyond that, there seems to be no core set of principles that define Bush's approach, and therefore, much like Nixon, no clearly communicable message that explains why he does things other than political calculation and expediency.”

Goldberg argues that Bush’s tactics run contrary to most of the GOP’s base. “Today, Reaganite conservatives make up a majority of the Republican party.” Goldberg opines, “If Bush held the Reaganite line on liberty at home the way he does on liberty abroad, he'd be in a lot better shape.”

That’s wishful thinking. Bush is what he is. The zebra’s not going to change his stripes at this point. Unless he has an epiphany similar to the conversion that caused him to give up booze, he’s not going to suddenly become a small government activist.

Liberals count the days to the end of Bush’s second term and dream about impeachment. Interestingly, many conservatives look forward to the end of bush’s second term as well, but wonder what will come next and what will be left of the GOP by 2008. Conservatives put up with Bush because he at least has some semblance of toughness with regard to national security. The Democrats simply have no credibility on this issue whatever.

On an interesting side note, American scholar Shelby Steele offers his very politically incorrect proposition of why the U.S. (and the West in general) finds itself incapable of actually prosecuting the War on Terror in a decisive manner. He also links this to our inability to control immigration along our southern border.

Peggy Noonan contends here that the institution of the presidency is in trouble. The job has gotten “too big, too complicated, too crucial, too many-fronted, too . . . impossible.” If her thesis is correct, “that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and … that there is nothing [we] can do about it,” then it won’t matter so much who the next president is. And that’s a scary thought.

Why Gas Station Boycotts Don't Work

Every spring gas prices go up. They hike even more in the run-up to the Memorial Day weekend and remain high until after Labor Day. Every year we grumble about price gouging and ruthless profiteering just as the higher travel season of summer comes on. Those stinking oil companies have us over a barrel, right? This year it’s far worse. $3/gallon gas with record oil industry profits! What’s up with that?

And every year like clockwork I receive an email from somebody with some grand plan to punish those filthy rich oil companies. It usually boils down to some kind of targeted boycott. One year the plan was to boycott all Exxon stations. Another year it was to not buy gas on a given day of the week. Another year it was to boycott both Exxon and Shell stations.

The whole idea behind these efforts is to create some kind of collective bargaining power—to show consumer muscle in order to ultimately force lower gasoline prices. While it is natural to want to do something to attack the perceived injustice, all of the efforts I have seen suggested suffer from shocking ignorance of how the free market works coupled with childish ignorance of the oil industry.

Econ 101
Let’s start with an Econ 101 look at the free market. Pricing of any commodity comes down to the interplay between supply and demand. If demand goes up while supply remains static (i.e. we start driving more and using more gas as the weather warms up), there is more competition for the same resource, so the price goes up. If supply decreases (as it does temporarily each spring when refineries retool to switch from heating oil production to more gasoline production) there is the same demand for fewer resources, so the price goes up. If demand decreases (i.e. we start driving less as colder months return), there is less competition for the same resource, so the price goes down. If we have a glut of supply (as we did for a brief period in the late 90s) there is the same demand for more resources, so the price goes down.

But all of this is extremely myopic, looking mainly at the tail end of the oil operation from the refinery to your car. When you look back up the chain from the refinery you will find a number of other factors that apply varying degrees of pressure on the market.

The biggest factor is the cost of crude oil. What does it cost to get the stuff out of the ground and ready to ship? This varies greatly depending on a variety of factors. For many years it has been cheaper to get oil out of the ground in the Middle East than anywhere else in the world. However, many are now realizing that these countries’ reserves are not limitless. Many are actively working to make their supplies last as long as possible by limiting production. You don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs in one fell swoop.

Since oil is a global commodity, political issues in all oil producing countries are a major factor in oil price. All industries have to hedge their bets and make plans for the future. When things are stable, it’s easy to look into the crystal ball and make appropriate plans. But when unrest occurs that ball becomes cloudy. Then the industry has to invest in a variety of strategies that might pan out instead of simply putting almost everything into one basket accompanied by a few contingency plans. The possibility of Iran going nuts and cutting off its supply to spite its face, terrorists attacking oil pipelines and stations throughout the Middle East, the election of a socialist dictator in Venezuela, the war in Iraq, and other similar issues add to the complexity and cost of oil production.

Econ 201
Now for Econ 201. The market is bigger than just you and your neighbors. Other countries compete for crude oil as well. In the last half-decade the world’s two most populous countries, India and China, have experienced economic booms. Societies in these countries are transforming from third world backwaters to modern industrial (even post-industrial) societies. Just as it requires a lot of oil to run the U.S. economy, the demand for oil in these vast developing countries has increased enormously. The global supply of oil is not increasing, but the global demand is. As we learned above, that means that the price of crude oil goes up.

Then we have the government. Federal and state governments levy heavy taxes on petroleum products, particularly gasoline. They’ve got to maintain those roads that we all travel on, and they’ve got to get money to do that from somewhere. Why not levy it on gasoline? It’s kind of like a use fee. These taxes are the second largest factor in the cost of a gallon of gas. The taxes on each gallon of gas are as much as 1000% more than the amount of oil company profit on each gallon. In other words, the government gets more—a lot more—of your gas dollar than the oil companies.

Refining of crude oil eats up another portion of your gas dollar. Refining doesn’t happen for free. Due to environmental concerns, we have not added a new refinery in the U.S. for thirty years (although, one is under construction). We have, however, dramatically increased the capacity and cleanliness of existing refineries. But if we had more refineries we could refine more oil.

Distribution
Now let’s understand how distribution works from that point until you have the gas in your car. Refineries have distribution centers where tanker trucks pull up to fill their tanks, kind of like a gas station on a larger scale. People directing the tanker trucks that supply your local gas station make decisions on filling those trucks somewhat akin to the way you decide where you will buy gas. They assiduously check the prices. They weigh factors such as distance from the drop point, available supply at the refinery, how urgently the retailers need the product, etc.

A lot of you think that if a truck has a particular oil company’s logo on the side, the gas in the tank came from that company’s refinery. This is not always the case. Most companies buy from any refinery that offers the best value based on the various factors I mentioned above. Federal rules require all gasoline to meet the same standards for each octane grade. Federal law permits oil companies to add ‘additives.’ This usually occurs at the retail station. Oil companies do not have to disclose (except to regulators) what is in its additives (it’s a big secret), but federal law basically requires additives to be inert. The additives leave a chemical signature that can be useful for some needs, such as crime solving. In other words, the additives generally add little or no value to the consumer.

The upshot is that the gasoline you buy at station A and its competitor, station B across the street is pretty much the same stuff. So you might as well get the least expensive gas, unless you make your decision based on other factors (i.e. restroom cleanliness, selection of junk food, etc.) Also, the fact that refineries will generally sell gas to any supplier that is willing to pay for it means that they will sell their gas even if their own outlets do not sell it.

Retail
Finally we come to the retail point. Gasoline retail stores are often franchises that are not directly owned by the oil companies. Of all the major factors in the cost of a gallon of gasoline, these guys are one of the least. They keep less than 2% of the sales price. They operate on a very slim margin.

That’s why they work so hard to remain competitive with nearby retailers. They are constantly playing a game of trying to make 1.23% instead of 1.21%. If they price too high, they lose customers. If they price too low, they sell high volumes but still don’t make enough money. And if they sell more than a few cents too low, state regulators will investigate them for selling below cost (which is illegal under most conditions).

They make huge margins on everything inside the store. One store operator reported pulling in $10,000 monthly just on corn dogs and potato wedges. You can bet that they make a lot more on a gallon of slush drink than they do on a gallon of gas.

Silly Boycotts
So, what would happen if everybody boycotted Exxon retailers this summer? We’d hurt a lot of small business owners that run the Exxon franchises, but we’d have just about zero impact on the oil company itself. What if we all refused to buy gas each Wednesday? This would only have an impact if we in truth reduced our usage by 1/7th. We most likely would simply make up for it by buying more gas the other six days of the week.

For a boycott to work, it has to have a staggering impact. None of the boycott efforts that have been flown by me would do that. The number one reason is that they suffer from poor design. The number two reason is that you simply won’t get enough people to go along with it. How many people do you think would actually take the kind of action suggested in an email campaign? If it were highly successful you’d get maybe 1% of the drivers in the nation to go along with it. Would the oil companies even notice? Most likely they would come up with marketing campaigns that would more than counteract any negative impact. Also, while personal drivers are important, unless you get a significant number of businesses involved, the impact will remain low. How many businesses that rely on vehicle transportation to make money would be willing to go along?

I am not saying that people upset over high gasoline prices should do nothing. What I am saying is that the boycott campaigns suggested by emails I have received are the wrong thing to do. It might give you a sense of smug self-justice, but the overall effect on the market will be unnoticeable. If you want to stick it to the oil companies, you need to first educate yourself about how the market functions and how the oil industry works. Then you have to devise a market method that will have the ultimate outcome of lowering gasoline prices.

That’s a tall order. Many have tried it, but nobody has really succeeded. The point is that simple, juvenile boycotts won’t work. In other words, stop sending me ridiculous emails about boycotting gas stations.

Utah's #51 and Getting Worse

Much has been made in education circles about the Utah Foundation’s report (see PDF version) criticizing Utah’s funding of public education. It is interesting to note that the report lists the foundation’s “major supporters” as some of the state’s biggest businesses. It is reasonable to assume that they have an interest in a well educated public.

Rather than measuring funding on a per-pupil basis alone (making us 51st in the nation), the report uses the measure of education tax revenues (for K-12) per $1000 of personal income. By that measure we ranked 5th in the nation in 1995, but slipped to 27th place by 2004. The report lays the blame for this slide chiefly on several changes in budget and tax policy. It strangely says four, but then lists five.

• 1985 Truth in Taxation Act.


• 1996 increase in residential property tax exemption.


• 1996 reduction in the state mandated property tax levy rate for schools.


• Annual floating (instead of every 3 or 4 years) of levy rate beginning in 1996.


• 1996 constitutional amendment allowing higher education to compete for income tax revenues.

In other words, the report is highly critical of taxpayer friendly policies implemented in the 80s and 90s, and of using income taxes to fund higher education. Ironically, this implies (particularly with regard to Truth in Taxation law) that it’s better for the education establishment to have uninformed taxpayers.

The report discusses the fact that K-12 education funding has increased in both Utah and the U.S. at large. From 2000 to 2004, K-12 funding increased 21.4% in the U.S., but only 15.6% in Utah. The report also expresses concern that Utah is only investing about the national average in education infrastructure, while its projected needs are far above average. The report concludes that it would require a $600 million tax increase to return Utah to its 1995 funding position, a move it says would be unwise. (Duh.)

As with all measures of this nature, the Utah Foundation report has some deficiencies and problems. For starters, it is based on the conventional wisdom that it is better to pay more for education. Yes folks, more money is the answer. Spend more and it will get better. That always works for government monopolies, right? Studies repeatedly show a poor correlation between cost and quality of education. The report also chastises us for not keeping up with the Joneses, as it were. We increased our funding, but many other states increased theirs more. We’re not running apace with the moving target.

The report also fails to consider that Utah still spends more of its budget on education than any other state. The report fails to consider that our schools are turning out lower quality graduates than 45 years ago despite the fact that we are spending over 400% more per student in inflation adjusted dollars. Our students still rank well when compared with other states, so this problem is nationwide.

The report also works under the assumption that a dollar carries the same value everywhere in the U.S. Admittedly, it adds a lot of complexity to control for cost of living in a study, but that’s no excuse for painting a skewed picture. The report tries to partially compensate for this by comparing rates of growth in personal income. While this is helpful, it assumes that all education funding comes from personal income and that inflation is equal everywhere. The foundation's funding businesses might have some conflict of interest in regard to the former.

Yet another problem is the fact that the reporting period ends in 2004, prior to this year’s legislative session that awarded the largest education spending increase in the history of the state. (My personal gripe is that this occurred without requiring any real education reform.) It also assumes that personal income growth would have been the same had the 1985 and 1996 tax reforms not passed. The report concludes that we would be spending $1200 more per student today had those initiatives failed. But given the fact that the passage of those initiatives fueled a multitude of dynamic economic and cultural changes, it is simply ridiculous to argue that all other financial markers would have remained the same without the initiatives. In other words, this is an unsupported conclusion.

In the early and mid 90s there was a great deal of concern about Utah’s institutions of higher education. How could our children be trained for the work world of tomorrow? How could our public universities and colleges compete? How could they be world-class institutions? (Incidentally, that cry is being repeated today at USU – see here.) The universities “needed” access to your income tax dollars. K-12 education advocates warned that it would harm primary and secondary education, but we went ahead and voted for the constitutional amendment anyway. The report suggests that this amendment did not substantially help higher education, but has seriously hurt K-12 education funding.

Where does this leave us? I’m afraid that Utah will perpetually be the whipping boy for the crowd that believes that education is only good if you pay more for it. I seriously don’t understand this attitude. Unless you can afford to shop on Rodeo Drive, you’re probably one of those normal people that crow about getting a bargain on something. Why is the proud-to-spend-more attitude in vogue when it comes to education? Perhaps we can chalk it up to the nothing’s-too-good-for-my-Johnnie attitude. At the current rate Utah will never catch up to, let alone keep up with the moving target. Nor is it clear that this game of chase carries education-improving value.

There’s no quick and easy answer. Our educational industrial complex needs a makeover along the lines of what I suggested here.

Are You Ready For a Nuclear Dump Next Door?

Utah Policy Daily put out a call to Utah bloggers to create what they termed a “blogswarm” to coincide with “No Way Day” on April 28 in opposition to making Utah the nation’s nuclear waste dumping ground. The idea is to have as many bloggers as possible write about Private Fuel Storage’s (PFS) plan to store 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on the Goshute Reservation just 50 miles from Salt Lake City, which is populated more densely than New York.

Quite honestly, I had mixed emotions about being asked to participate. I usually write about what I want to write about when I want to write about it. Amateur writers can do that kind of thing. There are no deadlines or imposed topics. (Of course, there’s no money for most of us either.) I usually just put material out for readers to chew on. I don’t often call for action. So part of me feels like I’m being manipulated. On the other hand, this seems like a very worthwhile effort.

To the average Utahn the idea of transporting large amounts of nuclear waste across the country to store it in a concentrated fashion close to our state’s largest population center seems like the most absurd idea anyone could imagine. It’s more than simply a not-in-my-backyard attitude. The average American outside of Utah, on the other hand, thinks, “Utah—where’s that? Isn’t it one of those big squarish states out west somewhere? Better there than here.”

Goshutes and PFS make a libertarian appeal, asking why they shouldn’t be allowed to do what they want to do with their own property. Besides, the Goshutes desperately need the jobs, they say. The fact of the matter is that while private property is an essential principle in our country, we all have to be good neighbors.

A couple of years ago a handful of very vocal libertarian-minded individuals in my community gathered enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would have repealed zoning laws and property use regulations in our city. They argued that zoning was actually unconstitutional and has often been used abusively. They argued that disputes should be resolved between neighbors and argued in the courts if necessary.

This plan sounded good to some people on paper, but when they actually thought about what would happen, the excitement dissipated. Most of the people in my city are good neighbors. But a few that are otherwise. 72% of the voters ultimately didn’t like the idea of anybody being able to put anything on any piece of property. What if your neighbor decided to turn his lot into a landfill?

Well, that’s precisely what the Goshutes and PFS are proposing to do. Only it would be a nuclear landfill. There goes the neighborhood — maybe quite literally! Since this waste would be stored in large metal casks above ground, can you imagine what kind of sweet target that would make for aspiring Osama wannabes?

Currently the waste is stored at disparate locations close to where the waste was created. Some of these are near population centers. But the concentration at each site is relatively low. The risk of keeping the waste in its current locations is lower than transporting it across the nation on trucks or trains to store it all together in one big dump. But the citizens and politicians near those locations simply want it out of their areas, and there’s a lot more of them than there are people and politicians in Utah, so they carry a lot more clout.

Utah’s politicians and bureaucrats have done everything possible to stop this storage facility, but they have repeatedly met with disappointment. The Goshutes and PFS anticipate only one final hurdle before their dream of a nuclear wasteland can be fulfilled. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) must grant approval for PFS to build a transfer facility adjacent to I-80 in Tooele.

The BLM is currently accepting public comment on the issue through May 8. All Utah citizens are invited to contact the BLM with their opinions on the approval of the transfer facility. You can let the BLM know how you feel about the issue by writing to them using one of the following methods:

Contact: Pam Schuller
E-mail address: pam_schuller@blm.gov
Fax number: (801) 977-4397

Snail mail:
Bureau of Land Management
Salt Lake Field Office
2370 South 2300 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84119

If you can’t think of what to write, you can refer to this sample letter put together by Utah Policy Daily. Let’s not have another downwinders situation.

Keryn of Hot Blava has a somewhat different view of the matter here as she grew up in Nevada and was originally opposed to Yucca Mountain. She doesn’t take issue with transporting or permanently storing the waste, but has significant problems with the likelihood of Skull Valley ending up becoming a permanent storage site. The above ground storage would be vastly different than the plans for Yucca Mountain.

Where Have All the Fiscal Conservatives Gone?

The GOP went four decades of the 20th century without simultaneously controlling of both chambers of Congress and the White House. During the first couple of decades it seemed like Republicans stumbled around vainly searching for a vision of what they wanted to be when they grew up. There were always fiscal conservatives in the party ranks, but Ronald Reagan made fiscal conservatism an article of faith for the party.

During the 80s and 90s Congressional Republicans stood squarely against government expansion and increased spending. They didn’t always get their way, but they influenced the debate. After taking control of Congress in 1994, Congressional Republicans consistently approved budgets smaller than requested by President Clinton. They still didn’t always get their way and the President reduced military capacity, but they held domestic spending increases to roughly 3% annually.

Then came President G.W. Bush, bringing a whole new spirit into the GOP. It was the spirit of spend and then spend more. The annual rate of increase in domestic spending since W came to office has been 7.6%. I first grumbled about this last spring here. Last fall I wrote a series of gripes about this here, here, here, and here. I also cited Dick Armey’s plainspoken disgust with the situation here.

President Bush has repeatedly proposed stunning increases in spending only to be outdone by his own party in Congress, which has piled spending requests on top of those proposals with the help of only-too-willing Democrats. So far, our chief executive has yet to see one of these fat-laden bills he can’t sign. Hey, there’s still plenty of ink in the ol’ bill signing pen. The President’s recent wimpy warnings about a veto ring very hollow, as the veto stamp seems to have been lost or thrown out completely.

For those that need a refresher course on the budget process, the Constitution stipulates that all revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Both the Senate and the House must approve the final version before the bill is sent to the President. The President can either sign or veto the bill. The veto may be a crude tool, but it is a very strong tool in sending messages to the legislature about what the executive will accept and what he/she will not accept. By failing to veto any bill (not just bloated spending bills), President Bush has sent a clear message to the legislature that the sky’s the limit when it comes to spending and government expansion.

The things that all of us find most egregious about government today are more or less tied to its unwieldy size. No one can get their arms around the beast. We have created a sprawling organization that is simply too massive to be effectively managed by a single executive. In two and a half years we’ll have a new executive in the White House. Regardless of his/her moxie or party, he/she will still govern ineffectively. The only argument will be the degree of lousiness. Like, hey, it’s only a –5 instead of a –10.

The only way to reign in government to a manageable size is to reduce the amount it spends. Former Delaware Governor Pete du Pont says here that the GOP rank and file “are neither moderate nor liberal but believe in conservative economic values: lower tax rates, controlled spending, and a market- as opposed to government-oriented economy.” He says, “it is the current Republican government that is fiscally liberal and the biggest budget-busting federal spenders since the 1960s.” Hence, the disillusionment among GOP voters.

Du Pont presents a four-point plan for returning the GOP to spending consciousness. The plan must be intended to be a long-term project, because it certainly won’t happen under this president, as it relies on the president to exercise a lot of fiscal discipline with rescissions, vetoes, and a wishfully included line-item veto. Let’s face it, it’s not in W’s blood to do any of this. The fourth point calls for reform of the earmark process. That’s one thing that might have a ghost of a chance of actually happening.

Du Pont then calls for the hard medicine of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I’m not sure how possible it is to get this through both chambers of Congress with at least two-thirds of each chamber voting in favor of it. But let’s just play like it’s possible. The only way 34 state legislatures would vote for it is if serious earmark reform were successful. Right now they’re addicted to the chits they get through the earmarking process. They would only vote to limit federal spending if they were sober and couldn’t get any more stuff from their pushers in D.C.

Du Pont specifically touts Delaware’s successful state constitutional amendment requiring “a three-fifths vote of the Legislature to approve spending more than 98% of revenue.” He also likes Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights. But please note that spending hungry politicians were able to convince Colorado voters to approve a totally unnecessary tax hike last year under that plan. Du Pont goes on to push for a national flat tax and repeal of free-speech inhibiting campaign rules that are chiefly designed to protect incumbents.

I think we ought to amend Utah’s constitution with something similar to the Delaware amendment. The only trouble is that I have this sinking feeling in my gut that it would be no problem to get three-fifths of the legislature to happily vote to spend more than 98% of revenues.

I like some of du Pont’s ideas, but I do not think they’re all workable. Moreover, I doubt we’re going to see any movement on limiting government until some consequential elected officials demonstrate strong leadership on the issue. Some of the voters are hungry for this message. But right now nobody with clout believes in it. Voters have the power to change that if it’s important enough to them.

The LDS Church Supports Marriage Protection Amendment

Since the days when Utah was trying to achieve statehood (finally awarded in 1896), the LDS Church has been quite circumspect in taking specific political stances in a public fashion, particularly on national issues. (To be sure, some Utah locals that either disagree with or don’t affiliate with the church feel that the church’s influence in Utah politics —whether overt or not—is too great.) It’s not that the church never dabbles in national politics; it just prefers to do so discretely. The church sticks largely to policy issues that its leaders feel are germane to the church’s mission. They actively work to steer clear of party and candidate politics.

In 2004 the church issued a public statement saying that it favored amending the Utah Constitution to define marriage as being between man and woman. The church’s statement did not favor any particular wording of the amendment, and no further public statements were made. An amendment had been passed by the legislature, and Utahns voted in favor of that amendment.

Church leaders declared in a 1995 statement called, The Family: A Proclamation To The World that marriage should be only between man and woman. The proclamation further called “upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family [as defined in the proclamation] as the fundamental unit of society.” So the church’s public political stance in favor of protecting traditional marriage falls within church doctrine.

Now the LDS Church has officially joined a movement that promotes amending the U.S. Constitution to define marriage as the “exclusive union of one man and one woman.” (See SLTrib, Dnews, Religious Coalition for Marriage) Elder Russell M. Nelson of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, along with 49 other religious leaders that include 16 Catholic bishops signed a statement calling for the amendment. The group doesn’t just call for an amendment; it proposes the actual text for the amendment (here).

These religious leaders are alarmed at “the growing trend of some courts to make marriage something it is not: an elastic concept able to accommodate almost any individual preference.” They contend that this “does not so much modify or even weaken marriage as abolish it.” They feel that a constitutional amendment “is the only measure that will adequately protect marriage from those who would circumvent the legislative process and force a redefinition of it on the whole of our society.”

An acquaintance of mine postulated that the group’s reasoning is somewhat similar to the reasoning used by abortion advocates in Roe v. Wade. I disagree. In Roe the Supreme Court abused its judicial mandate, creating new law that cannot reasonably be construed to exist in the text of the U.S. Constitution; thereby, creating a right to abortion that was far more liberal than any law then on the books of any state (or any other nation for that matter).

The Constitution, on the other hand, specifies the democratic process for amending the document. Roe usurped the democratic process, circumventing the will of the people and creating new legislation from the judicial bench. While a constitutional amendment supersedes federal, state and local laws, the process of amending the Constitution is inherently democratic. The will of the people can be heard through their elected representatives, first in Congress, and then in their respective state legislatures. If Roe proponents had wanted a democratic outcome, they would have sought the passage of a constitutional amendment rather than a court fiat.

The problem is that it is deucedly difficult to pass a constitutional amendment. You have to convince far more people to vote for it than you do if you run a court case up the ranks to the Supreme Court. Thousands of amendments have been proposed and Congress has voted on hundreds, but only 27 have passed muster to become part of our Constitution.

A proposed amendment must first pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds vote of each house (with no variation in wording). Then two thirds of the nation’s state legislatures must pass the proposed amendment before it becomes law. This can take a long time if it happens at all. The 27th Amendment took 203 years to finish that process (see here). There is no reason to believe that the marriage protection amendment stands a good chance of being passed by both houses of Congress, let alone being passed by 34 state legislatures.

Predictably, people indifferent to traditional marriage see this move as an intolerant and divisive assault on the civil rights of the minority. But amendment promoters provide 10 researched reasons (here) why they feel traditional marriage must be protected. (Researcher Stanley Kurtz has hundreds of articles supporting this view—see here.) In our political system both sides will be free to lobby politicians and voters. It is not at all clear how it will end up.

Realism and Iran

For several generations our foreign policy was largely controlled by realism (a.k.a. realpolitik), a philosophy purportedly based in practicality, with stability as its chief goal. In fact, much of our foreign policy is yet guided by this school of thought, howbeit, with a strong infusion of G.W. Bush’s brand of idealism (apparently newly minted since 9/11).

Decades of realism brought us into Faustian arrangements with despots of the likes of Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran, the House of Saud, etc. (just to mention a few in the Middle East). We knew they were tyrants, but they were our tyrants. Norman Podhoretz argues here that this policy did not buy us stability. Instead it brought us more than two dozen wars just in the Middle East since Israel’s inception in 1948. Podhoretz quotes President Bush as saying, “In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy.”

Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University asserts here that the soft brand of ‘realism’ we employed was a perversion of the term. (He has a point—it certainly doesn’t seem very ‘realistic.’) He says that the Kissinger and (Utah native Brent) Scowcroft style of realism detrimentally over emphasized preventing monsters from rearing their ugly heads at just about any cost. He contends that realism in truth means “understanding the dangers of hunting monsters--but also the dangers, to ourselves and others, of failing to do so.”

Charles Krauthammer says here that our soft version of realism was “not just the futility but the danger of a foreign policy centered on the illusion of stability and equilibrium.” Krauthammer’s essay is actually a more complete discussion of American foreign policies for the past seven plus decades. While he snipes at Scowcroft’s realism, he strongly pummels the Clinton administration’s “eight years of sleepwalking, of the absurd pursuit of one treaty more useless than the last, while the rising threat--Islamic terrorism--was treated as a problem of law enforcement.”

Cohen says that the U.S. today has a healthy contention between idealism and realism in its foreign policy. He says that it makes us appear cynical, inconsistent, and morally fatuous, but he seems to think that it’s the best approach. So we work with the likes of the House of Saud, Pakistan’s Musharraf, and many other less-than-democratic elements when it meets our needs, but since 9/11 we have increasingly been guided by an overall idealism that Natan Sharansky says here is mostly due to the personal belief and willpower of President Bush.

But Sharansky notes that President Bush is increasingly standing nearly alone on this issue. His efforts to create a democratic society in Iraq, top-down sans any of the liberal institutions and lower level elements that make democracy work is proving to be much more difficult than anyone expected. Peggy Noonan laments here with respect our current problems in Iraq about the fact that all leaders have blind spots.

Iran
If we thought Saddam Hussein with WMDs was bad, we now face a threat at least as ominous—a nuclear Iran. Like Saddam, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has (and other Iranian officials have) made increasingly bold and incendiary remarks about Iran’s nuclear program. Mark Steyn writes here and here about the nature of the threat (see also William Kristol’s take here). Whether Iran has achieved the ability to enrich nuclear materials to weapon grade or not, it wants the rest of the world to believe it has. Iranian officials have been very open about their desire to nuke Israel off the face of the earth. Steyn asserts that Iran has been the one country you can count on to walk its talk since the mullahs took over 27 years ago, so the threat of nuking Israel is very real.

While the international community (the U.S. included) sits around with serious faces warning of grave consequences, Steyn laments that “no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it's never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences.” He says that Ahmadinejad’s thinking that Iran’s enemies are impotent to do anything about Iran’s aggression seems quite warranted. Steyn also quotes commentary by Iranian officials showing that they are quite willing to accept massive casualties to achieve their goals.

People are still arguing that we should have left Saddam in place, containing him in Iraq. Never mind the oppression and murder he perpetrated on his own people. Oddly enough, some of the same folks that argue that we were not morally responsible for that now argue that we have a moral responsibility to intervene in Darfur. But the Iran issue is not one of simple containment. We have open and credible threats of extranational attacks on American interests and allies.

Steyn tries to put this into perspective by saying that if you stood up on an airplane and announced that you had a bomb, you would not be treated as if your statement was “harmless rhetorical flourish.” He contends that neither should we dismiss Iran’s statements as “a rhetorical stylistic device that's part of the Persian oral narrative tradition.”

I take issue with experts that tell us that Iran is five to ten years away form having a credible nuclear weapon. Iran has demonstrated a willingness to put significant resources into this effort. Iran has roughly the same industrial capacity that the U.S. had in 1941 at the start of the A-bomb project. Back then nobody knew how to make a nuclear weapon, yet four years later we had one. Today the information for creating nukes is widely available. What in the world makes us think that it will take Iran five years to create a nuclear weapon? This is not realism, it’s delusion.

Leaving Iran’s threat against Israel aside, let’s ask how a nuclear Iran might impact the U.S. homeland. Iran has long been one of the chief supporters of anti-American terrorism (see here). Nuclear weapons are currently the holy grail of terrorists. Does any sane person believe that once Iran has nuclear weapons, there will not be a push to use those weapons to perpetrate terrorist acts in the U.S.?

Disdaining “the long diplomatic dance that brought us to this moment,” Steyn calls for immediate unilateral military action to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program. Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney says here that a military strike is feasible. But we'd have to go it alone. Just about everyone agrees that it would be suicide for Israel to take the point in such an operation, as it would give any Middle Eastern country that could in any way call itself an ally of Iran (i.e. an enemy of Israel) an excuse to attack Israel.

Although I don’t doubt the seriousness of Iran’s nuclear threat, I believe Steyn’s call for an immediate U.S. led military strike on Iran is pure fantasy. Some argue that our military is too weak. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy, but I believe that the will of the American people to pull off this kind of operation is not strong enough at this point in time. Hence, President Bush does not presently have the political strength to do it.

Many believe that the military option is not the best one, and that is a valid view. But I have yet to hear any alternative that sounds remotely feasible that would produce the desired outcome. Moreover, I would argue that the Bush Administration would be derelict in its duty if it did not at least make contingency plans to deal with the threat militarily. By definition, diplomacy can only be effective if a credible military threat exists to back it up. But it’s only credible if we have the will to carry it out, and we have little evidence that diplomacy works with terrorists.

Whatever our response to Iran, it must be based in the reality of our current situation. I don’t think any us want to wake up to another 9/11.

Calming Our Nerves Chemically

I know I’m not the only person around that wonders why there has been an astronomical jump in the prescription of psychotropic drugs over the past several decades. I remember as a kid hearing about people taking tranquilizers—you know, better living through legal chemicals—but the number of people on drugs for psychological conditions has skyrocketed since then (see Wash Post article). I remember people talking about stress and anxiety when I was young, but over the past 30 years the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has formally acknowledged an immense cadre of previously unknown psychological disorders.

I have to be careful about how I say this, but a friend of mine that is in a position to know informed me that there are a fair number (he/she quoted a specific range that stunned me) of adults in my very neighborhood that regularly take Prozac or some other mood altering drug. This person says that from his/her interactions with these people, the overall results are not good. Their low points dissipate, but so do their high points. Nothing’s good and nothing’s bad—it just is. They forget how to feel much emotionally.

Then we get to the politically sticky issue of schools and doctors pressuring parents to put their kids (especially boys—see Newsweek article) on psychiatric drugs. Although pediatric prescriptions of these drugs experienced a dramatic drop recently due to concerns about depression and suicide (see Wash Post article), the rate is still drastically higher than it was a few decades ago.

And don’t give me the tripe that parents are not pressured. Pressure was applied to us when our oldest son was in elementary school, but despite the school’s best efforts, he was never successfully diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Why do kids today have to be drugged up when the previous generation survived without these drugs? What is it about kids (especially boys) today that makes them so much more difficult for schools to handle than they were 30 years ago? (I don’t wish to be insensitive to those that are using these drugs. I know people that swear that Ritalin saved their children’s education.)

Eventually some people started wondering some of the same things I have been wondering. Where have all of these new psychiatric conditions come from? Why have prescriptions of psychiatric drugs skyrocketed? Some people asked so many questions that they decided to study the issue. Lisa Cosgrove of the University of Massachusetts in Boston has found that there are some very shady financial ties between psychiatric experts that develop new psychological diagnoses and drug companies that develop drugs to treat those maladies (see Wash Post article).

Among other findings, Cosgrove and her colleagues found that “100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychotic disorders” had “egregious financial ties” with psychiatric drug companies. Some in the psychology field say that this “should not undermine public confidence in the conclusions of its experts.” Oh, really? Even the president of the APA expressed concerns last year that if psychologists “are seen as mere pill pushers and employees of the pharmaceutical industry, our credibility as a profession is compromised.”

To be fair, some psychologists have called Cosgrove’s study “very flawed.” Of course, these same critics have been beneficiaries of drug company money. Sheldon Krimsky who helped author the study retorts that the criticisms do not reduce the ethical concerns raised by the study. The APA says that it has already implemented plans to require more transparency in the future, but some question whether these efforts are sufficient to protect the public.

Drug companies have a right (perhaps even a responsibility) to do research and development to improve the lot of mankind as well as to improve their profits. They require medical professionals to do much of that R&D. We expect doctors to have altruistic motives, although; many doctors see their Hippocratic Oath as quite irrelevant (see here). We expect doctors to “do no harm,” but many of them see this as no more noble a virtue than making a buck. Some insurance companies and health care companies have practices that don't help matters much either.

Since we cannot trust drug companies or medical professionals to always do what is best for patients, we must require full disclosure and full transparency. And let’s be skeptical the next time somebody shouts, “Eureka! I’ve discovered a new psychological disorder.” Especially if they have also discovered a drug to treat it.

Does Tithing Cause Bankruptcy?

Here we go again perpetuating the myth that the tithing required of LDS Church members contributes to Utah’s high bankruptcy rate. Dave Anderton writes in an article in yesterday’s Deseret News, “…the reasons [for Utah’s high bankruptcy rate] extend to larger family size, higher charitable contributions and lower-than-average per-capita income levels.”

Utah has actually dropped from the highest bankruptcy rate in the nation to third place. Big deal. It looks more like this is due to Indiana’s and Ohio’s economic difficulties (manufacturing downturns) and Utah’s booming economy than due to a sudden surge in our citizens’ fiscal responsibility. 2005 bankruptcy numbers were somewhat skewed, since many filed to take advantage of old consumer friendly laws before new laws went into effect. Still, it’s clear that Utah still has a major problem.

Last year I wrote about this issue here. The unnamed economists cited in Anderton’s article (although I have heard local economists—even ones from BYU—repeat these things with my own ears) appear to be making faulty connections when they claim that higher than average charitable donations are a significant factor in Utah’s higher than average bankruptcy rate. The implication is that people get into financial trouble partially because they are LDS and pay tithing.

Let’s make this quite clear. No one can cite any empirical evidence to back this up. While Mormons certainly do file bankruptcies, it’s not the full tithepayers (people that pay 10% of their income annually to the church) that are filing. After studying the numbers, I concluded in last year’s post that the following things are known about Utah’s high bankruptcy rate:

• Utah’s high bankruptcy rate is artificially inflated somewhat by those that first attempt to take responsibility for their problems before giving up.


• Most bankruptcies in Utah are filed by people that choose not to fully participate in the LDS Church.


• Some members of the LDS Church have some strange financial ideas based on Mormon folklore rather than on actual LDS doctrine. Perhaps this is more common among those that don’t fully participate.


• Given the below average household income, larger than average family size may stretch some families to the point of default on obligations when unusual financial events occur.

The idea that the higher than average charitable donation rate contributes to Utah’s high bankruptcy rate is one of those conventional wisdom things that is not borne out by the facts. If anything, people that generously go beyond tithing to pay fast offerings help some church members that are on the edge to avoid bankruptcy. In fact, I think an argument could be made that paying a full tithing can help protect people from bankruptcy, as this practice has a tendency to instill a certain level of responsibility in financial decision making. (Of course, I am only making these claims based on anecdotal experiences rather than empirical evidence—using the same method that I am criticizing.)

The Standard Examiner editors have it right when they explain here how to avoid bankruptcy:

“Don't be tempted into using high-interest-rate credit cards for anything but an absolute emergency, live in a home or apartment you can afford, drive a car that's economical to own and operate, and generally live within your means -- which means spending on a level that allows you to save money from month to month, as well.”

Now, if we can just get Utah citizens to go along with that.