-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
While Republicans have been trying to leech the credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama has upstaged them by laying out his immigration reform plan. This is a signature political issue that the Republicans have tried to make their own. However, the E-Verify program will test whether they really want to solve the problem or whether, like bin Laden, they’re more interested in maintaining the issue for its political usefulness.
The E-Verify system looks for a match between the name and SSN of the worker who applies for a job. If there’s a mismatch then the worker may be undocumented, or the worker has to contact the SSA to get the records corrected. The E-Verify program, if widely implemented, would dramatically reduce the incentive for illegal entry.
However, business hates it. The Florida Chamber of Congress has succeeded in getting mandatory E-Verify removed from a Florida immigration reform bill. Republicans are caught between their business overlords and the Tea Party.
The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify. Could it be there’s another reason? Maybe it’s because businesses can take advantage of the illegal’s vulnerability and pay them less than the minimum wage and violate work safety rules, as pointed out in Obama’s recent speech.
The error rates for E-Verify are steadily improving with most errors occurring due to typos and changes in names or citizenship that are not reported to the Social Security system. Workers need to get these errors fixed in order to receive their full Social Security benefits to which they are entitled.
The problem with identity theft occurs when an undocumented worker uses someone else’s (matching) name and SSN when applying for a job. That problem has been solved by something called “E-Verify Self Check” where individuals can access their status before applying for a job. The system knows whom you’ve worked for over the years and can ask the kind of questions that only the legitimate worker would be able to answer correctly. Therefore, workers can be verified and identity thieves won’t be able to verify their data.
Another problem for E-Verify is the case of Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting that is before the Supreme Court (Kagan, J., recused). At issue is a 2006 Arizona statute, the Legal Arizona Workers Act that requires all employers to participate in the E-Verify program, which is preempted by a federal law that specifically makes that system voluntary. The law was signed by then-governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano, now the Secretary of Homeland Security, the department that runs E-Verify. What you have is the Obama administration’s Solicitor General arguing against the most effective tool in the administration’s arsenal against illegal immigration.
As pointed out by Justice Ginsburg during oral arguments:
How can Arizona take a Federal resource, which the Federal Government says is voluntary except in certain circumstances, and turn it into something that’s mandatory?
The E-Verify Modernization Act of 2011 seeks to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory. It will be interesting to see if the bill suffers the same fate as the Florida legislation.
H/T: VC, Miami Herald, Adam Serwer, Daily Finance.
Otteray Scribe:
“Roco, I started to say I could not follow the logic of your comment, when I realized it was completely devoid of logic. And BTW, the problem with anecdotal “evidence” is that an anecdote is an N = 1 sample, and thus has absolutely zero predictive or evaluative power. Do not use a sample size smaller than N = 30 if you want to try and prove a point.”
So you post the revues of 2 people above against the book and claim it has no value because of those 2 negative comments and then you turn around and tell me that a sample of 1 is not big enough to prove a point.
So you are telling me if 30 people are wrong I can prove my point but if 1 person is right my point is invalid? So if 30 people are wrong and 1 person is right, right doesn’t matter because 30 people are wrong. Only in the progressive mind.
I have news for you right is right and wrong is wrong. It doesn’t take a majority to determine ethical behavior.
Speaking of health care insurance and profit expectations . . .
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/insuring-good-times-at-th_b_867326.html
Roco, I started to say I could not follow the logic of your comment, when I realized it was completely devoid of logic. And BTW, the problem with anecdotal “evidence” is that an anecdote is an N = 1 sample, and thus has absolutely zero predictive or evaluative power. Do not use a sample size smaller than N = 30 if you want to try and prove a point.
Now we take you back to your regular programming.
Oops.
Now you’ve just drank too much kool-aid because that didn’t make any sense at all, sociopath.
But then again, very little of what you say makes sense under critical examination.
Carry on.
why do you think they call them neocons? they came from the progressives and they still have that stink on them. Didn’t Reagan used to be a liberal?
Dance little altruist neocon dance.
Otteray Scribe:
so how does that square with steel falling to 1/4 of its price prior to Andrew Carnegie?
“Andrew Carnegie and the Steel Industry
When Andrew Carnegie founded Carnegie Steel in 1872, the biggest steel producer in the world was England and the going price of steel rails was about $56 per ton. Carnegie was an eager innovator. He adopted the revolutionary Bessemer process and introduced new accounting methods to make his operations more efficient, applied a merit-pay system to reward his workers, and implemented many employee-suggested ideas. Carnegie Steel became so efficient that by 1900 the company could produce steel rails at $11.50 per ton, and its rail output surpassed that of all the steel mills in England combined. Other U.S. firms followed Carnegie’s lead, and America became the dominant steel producer of the world.”
Or oil:
“John D. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry
Our story would not be complete without recalling the success of John D. Rockefeller. By the 1890s, Standard Oil had a 60 percent market share of all the oil sold in the world. Rockefeller sold the oil at eight cents a gallon—that would be around $1.60 today. Eight cents a gallon! Nobody in the world could do it that cheaply. Kerosene was so inexpensive that people could light their homes for less than one cent an hour.”
So what you are telling me is the same thing progressives say about Wal Mart today. Basically screw what the average person has to pay for a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread. We dont care that steel sells for $55 dollars per ton instead of 11/ton. We dont care that the average person cannot afford a car as long as we have our progressive values. Is that what you are saying?
So you want high prices? It would seem so. I imagine those revues are by progressives such as yourself. Who would have thought they would not like a book exposing a progressive myth?
And that is exactly what I have come to expect from the followers of Karl Marx.
@OS: Roco is a fool and a liar, if the facts don’t fit his theory he ignores them or lies about them, if somebody doesn’t fit his stereotype he just lies and claims they do.
FWIW, Roco, I do not believe in government subsidies at all. I don’t believe government should be in the business of deciding what is good or bad for society; if some industry or activity is critical to the well-being of the country but cannot earn enough profit to stay afloat, then government should just take it over. Period. That is what government is for, to provide us critical services at the least possible cost through economies of scale and the elimination of profit.
If we citizens do not think its critical, they should stay out of it. If we do think it is critical, they should either regulate it as an autonomous public utility (with caps on salaries and profits and required liberalization of service), and if that fails to work also, just subsume the operation completely.
In the health care debate, private insurance was pretty much optional early on in this country, very few people had any kinds of insurance. When healthcare and health insurance rose to the level of necessity, they should have forced both insurance and hospitals into the public utility status; then we would not be in the current situation. We might not even require Medicare.
There are trillions of dollars worth of products that can be sold, and millions of millionaires to be made, without anybody ever profiting off of the death and misery of others.
That book is a revisionist history and you link to a right wing revisionist web site. If you go to Amazon and read the thoughtful reviews, as opposed to the sycophant reviews, you will find gems such as the following:
Then there is this review of the book which gets right to the point:
You get that? “…the stated goal of this book is to argue that government subsidies are bad…?” In other words, the thing starts off with bad scholarship, because when you come in with a propaganda agenda, you end up with a biased account. No surprise there. This is exactly what I have come to expect from the followers of Ayn Rand, such as Roco.
“A very narrow spectrum of people are controlling the economy of this country and you support that.”
No, I don’t. What I support is that banking and energy need to be heavily regulated to keep the market abuses for profit they’ve perpetrated against the American people from happening again and that health care – vital to national security – should be taken out of the hands of for profit insurance companies and unified under a single-payer system that covers everyone thus gaining the operational efficiencies of having the largest risk pool possible and cutting out the excess costs of multiple channels of processing and the cost of expected ROI as profit for investors in said for profit insurance companies.
You really don’t have a clue.
“no, neoconservatives do not.”
Really?
“Neoconservatism in the United States is a branch of American Conservatism that currently focuses on foreign policy, where it proposes to use American economic and military power to bring capitalist democracy to other countries. The movement emerged in the 1970s among Democrats who were angry at the party’s move to the left in both domestic and foreign policy. It rejected the goal of ever-expanding welfare state and government regulation of the economy. Instead it advocated policies more in line with the libertarian Chicago School of Economics. As its economic views became widely accepted by both Republicans and Democrats in the 1990s, Neoconservatism turned more to foreign policy, where it played a major role in recent Republican presidential administrations. It is notable for its support for Israel and its deep interest in the Middle East.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
The tyranny of the venal knows no party boundaries, but neoconservatism does indeed reject the goal of ever-expanding welfare state and government regulation of the economy and you stomping your feet and saying “No it doesn’t!” isn’t going to change that fact. Like the fact that the market de-regulations responsible for our current crisis started under Reagan, continued by the Bush’s and that nitwit Clinton, and protected and perpetuated our current purchased and paid in full corporatist President continues to promote. Like you promote. No. Not only was Bush a neocon. YOU are a neocon, “Roco”. By definition.
What’s really funny is you keep trying to insist that black is white. That’s just hysterical. Dance, lil’ sociopath, dance!
we do have a set of rules, its called the Constitution. That should be the ultimate regulator. It isn’t, unelected government bureaucrats within EPA or DOE, etc with political axes to grind or lobbyists do the regulating now to benefit their particular cause or industry.
A very narrow spectrum of people are controlling the economy of this country and you support that. I don’t. The people should be controlling the market through their individual transactions and if they are harmed then the court system should be the avenue to be made whole. A legal system of objective laws, like we had at the beginning.
no, neoconservatives do not. George Bush was a neocon and he was no different than any other progressive.
You are on the wrong side, accept the fact that you are promoting neocon economic theory/philosophy and move on. It is actually pretty funny to watch.
Otteray Scribe:
May I recommend a book titled Myth of the Robber Barons?
here is an exerpt. Things are not exactly what they teach you in the progressive schools. You dont have to tell me but if you read this article you will say upon finishing “I did not know that”.
http://www.fee.org/nff/the-myth-of-the-robber-barons/
“Three Assumptions About Capitalism
This shallow conclusion dovetails with another set of assumptions: First, that the free market, with its economic uncertainty, competitive stress, and constant potential for failure, needs the steadying hand of government regulation; second, that businessmen tend to be unscrupulous, reflecting the classic cliché image of the “robber baron,” eager to seize any opportunity to steal from the public; and third, that because government can mobilize a wide array of forces across the political and business landscape, government programs therefore can move the economy more effectively than can the varied and often conflicting efforts of private enterprise.
But the closer we look at public-sector economic initiatives, the more difficult it becomes to defend government as a wellspring of progress. Indeed, an honest examination of our economic history—going back long before the twentieth century—reveals that, more often than not, when government programs and individual enterprise have gone head to head, the private sector has achieved more progress at less cost with greater benefit to consumers and the economy at large.”
Mr. Makes Up Terminology,
Blah blah blah.
Neoconservatism rejects the goal of ever-expanding welfare state and government regulation of the economy. You know. Like you do.
Contrast with democratic socialism which endorses limited controlled market segments and regulated capitalism.
Just like your weak attempts to equate fascism with socialism, this attempt at equating neoconservatism and socialism fails because saying that two things which are diametrically opposed is a false equivalence and an oxymoron.
However, an oxymoron from you is simply par for the course.
Words have meaning.
Just not the meaning you make up as you go along.
You don’t have honest effort and fair competition without regulations. Regulations are rules. Without rules, there is only tyranny and abusive practices. A game without rules isn’t a game. It’s anarchy. Anarchy is tyranny of the strong over the weak. There is nothing less American in the views of the Founders than tyranny, be it from a king, an industrialist or a legal fiction shielding for profit enterprises from liability.
Sad and pathetic try though.
seems to me the socialist industrialists are the truly greedy ones and the sociopaths. They want everyone else to pay for what they should be paying for.
Maybe Tony and Buddha are shills for those industrialists?
You all troll for GM and GE? Make sure they get to have government help so they can survive? Now that actually makes sense. No wonder you 2 spout off the way you do, you must be paid by neocon/socialist industrialists to keep government money pouring into those companies so the CEO’s can have fat paychecks while the poor middle class taxpayer is left holding the bag for your greedy employers.
You are doing a good job, but not good enough. I know your game now. Run along trolls and spread your mendacious philosophy of government sponsored greed some other place.
“A greedy industrialist wants to maximize profits through honest effort and fair competition.”
**********************************************
Well, that proves you know squat about both industrialists and human nature. Recall the robber barons of the 1800s and early 1900s? Teddy Roosevelt. a REPUBLICAN, brought them to heel with his trust busting efforts. He made a lot of enemies as a result and probably cost him being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during his lifetime. Bill Clinton corrected that blight on body politic.
They would revert to that pre-1900 business model in a heartbeat if they could. As I write this, there are forces at work that would try to roll back the reforms initiated by TR and his political heirs.
wOOSTY:
I agree with that. They dont like capitalism because it causes wages to rise due to makret forces. So the neocon industrialists as you call them (I call them socialist industrialists) keep competition out and wages low with the help of government favortism. Think GE and GM for starters.
A greedy industrialist would want the best work force possible and pay the maximum wage he could to maximize his profits. And he would also want to have a safe working environment so he could attract the best workers possible. A neocon/socialist industrialist would want to rely on government to help him keep his wages low and his profits high, he would also want government taking care of health care which would also help his bottom line and maybe even have government stifle competition so he could have a monopoly and make even more money.
In short a neocon/socialist industrialist would want to be tight as a tick with government so he could maximize his profits through the help/force of government. A greedy industrialist wants to maximize profits through honest effort and fair competition.
W=c,
What Tony said. You can’t argue with the greed of a sociopath. It is inherently irrational.
@Woosty: Why is that obviality a scary thought …
Because they are thieves; they are legally (and sometimes illegally, but unpunished) appropriating vast amounts of wealth that the vast majority of us would judge as unfair gains, and they really only care about themselves. They don’t think about the long term health of society, the nation, their company or their employees, if they can steal enough in the short term to last THEM PERSONALLY for the long term, they are done, and free to leave behind them a wake of destruction.
I would add that in properly run industry there would be NO NEED for a minimum wage. Wages should not stagnate or decline as profits and upper management profitteering soar….that’s not industry it is deconstruction…which is what we are seeing now…to be replaced by what? Fact is we need illegal (and poor legal)immigrants to maintain current business and industry workforce standards.