Load the correcting and payback on the kids?

The Dream Act under consideration by Congress would grant to children of illegal immigrants, who have grown up in the U.S., instate tuition, student loan eligibility, legal status by serving in the military. It would require they have essentially no criminal records.

Some oppose in seeming knee-jerk reaction, being opposed to anything that would benefit illegals in any way, crying “No amnesty!" They refuse to recognize that our businesses have employed and our economy benefitted from the immigrant parents; and because of this our federal government has largely winked at their coming. So now we should load the correcting and payback on kids who have grown up as much [U.S.] Americans as you and I?

Congress – The hurrier they go the behinder they get.

So with the hurry of the current bill to extend Bush tax cuts for all (including the high incomes) the Senate both stimulates the economy (Obama wanted this) and aggravates the deficit (the Republican tea-partyers strenuously opposed this.)

If the economy continues to recover, perhaps spurred by these extended tax cuts (who can tell?), then how do we rate them? Deserving our votes next time around for helping economic recovery or undeserving for aggravating the damaging deficit. And then there are those senators, like Bennett of Utah, who don’t have to care – they’re lame ducks anyway.

Divorce law prevent quarrels over children? . . .

Recently a family counselor complained that the current system of divorce law often turns children into something to fight about. The law proscribes parents using parent time, custody as bargaining chips, but parents will do it anyway, despite their attorney’s best efforts. The blame for the quarreling does not lie at the feet of the state or the law, but the parent or parents, as the case may be.

No state and no law can prevent parents quarreling over the children, and co-parenting works only where both parents are willing. States are not good at meddling in family affairs, never have been and never will be. Unfortunately, in our society, they must meddle anyway.

We all spy, but must never admit it.

Mr. Assange of Wikileaks believes revealing the U.S. spied on the U.N. in violation of U.N. security protocols helps keep the government honest. Others think his leaks have jeopardized diplomacy and endangered our soldiers. Who knows the truth? Time was when one U.S. President shown diplomatic mail someone had intercepted said, “Gentlemen do not read other people’s mail.”

It is said Eisenhower shocked State Department people when he forthrightly admitted we were over-flying the USSR for surveillance after they had brought down the U-2 flight back in the ‘50s. State department rules are that everyone knows you do these things, but one must never openly admit it. Why not? Eisenhower’s admission provided a refreshing breath of candor in the formalistic world of diplomacy and pretended secrets.

LAST LAUGH

We had a conflict - he and I.
Was not a hot impassioned fight,
but more the kind where reason's clash
becomes a contest who is right.

He said man was an animal
whose end was death and life a dream,
And I said that might do for him
but I held man in more esteem.

He quoted Neitsche, Satre, and I -
prophets Moses and Malachi.
I own I thought I came out best
but with no judge, we let it lie.

Still, if I'm right and he is wrong
then I may shout it loud and long.
While he - though right as right may be
can never do the same to me.

Wow! I knew Mike Lee when he was 5 yrs old . . .

In home day school in Virginia with my daughter Ellen and the Ted Bell’s son. Now he’s a U.S. Senator elect, doesn’t yet know his way to the Senate washroom, but already has [see DesNews 12/5/10] a National Security Coordinator. Hope he's got an office manager too.

U. S. Rep Charlie Rangel . . . flaunting dishonesty.

Long-time, influential congressman Rangel of New York finally censured by House on 11 of 13 counts brought, including false financial statements (“misleading”) and failure to pay income tax on condominium in [somewhere foreign] country. How could he, long-time chair of the tax writing Ways & Means Committee not know his income from the condo (presumed) rentals was subject to tax? If he knowingly failed to report it, that’s criminal tax fraud. Commenting to the press, he had the unmitigated gall to say, “At no time has it ever entered my mind to enrich myself or to do violence to the honesty that’s expected of all of us in this House.” What an insult to the U. S. Congress!
Amazingly, New Yorkers just re-elected him by a wide margin. Assuming his Republican opponent wasn’t an absolute klutz there seem to be three explanations for this, each successively more damning than the one before: 1) A lot of New York voters just vote the Democrat party line, period; 2) a lot of black voters just vote for whomever is black; and 3) a lot of the voters reasoned “if he cheats on his tax return just like I do, he’s my kind of man.

Utah’s migrant worker proposal vs. Obama’s Pride. Guess who wins.

Utah representative Lopes, with others, is proposing a Utah law allowing worker cards for illegals who can show no criminal record, etc. that would let them work legally in Utah with taxes withheld, etc. Trouble is, that law cannot take effect without setting aside the Federal law imposing penalties on employers who hire these people.

So a whole lot of sweat and effort is being invested into a futile project. The Arizona law directing enforcement by police does not require any adjustment to Federal law, but yet Mr. Obama’s off-ths-hip criticism of it is now being protected in hare-brained litigation all the way to the Supreme Court to have it declared unconstitutional as interfering with Federal pre-emption of laws re immigration.

If Obama’s Atty General will go to such inane lengths to sustain his criticism of the Arizona law, then the chances of a getting special exception for the proposed Utah are like those of snow ball in you-know-where.

So Uncle Sam plans to embezzle our earned retirement

The DesNews this morning publishes one of those wise uncle editorials about how we just can’t really reduce the Federal deficit by more taxes or salary freezes, etc, but must come to grips with those monster entitlements, you know – social security, medicare, medicaid. Trouble is they define entitlements as government-bestowed benefits so long relied on that people feel entitled to them as a matter of right.

Whoa! Stop right there. Social security is not a dole, a benefit dished out just because you got old. You worked and paid for it. And reliable studies show that if your funds had been invested even willy-nilly in blue chip stocks you would have wound up with more than the SS benefit you get now.

So DesNews and everyone else, if you’re going to put SS benefits on the bargaining table to balance the budget, you had better acknowledge up front and give full weight to the fact that it always was a right, bought and paid for. And if you cause Uncle Sam to welch on that obligation, you’re performing what would be treated as criminal fraud in almost any other context.

In too many of these instances Congress and the White House just shrug and say in effect, “Oh yeah, but this is government.”