-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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.
Oh yes. Heres the people you trust to protect everyone from getting ripped off in action.
http://www.newschannel5.com/story/14643085/police-profiting-off-drug-trade
“”Everything’s paid through seizures and fines,” Chandler said.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked, “So if these officers out on the interstate don’t come up with cash, then they might lose their jobs?”
“Well, it’s a possibility, yes,” Chandler answered.
Out on I-40, interdiction officers have a choice: Conventional wisdom is that the drugs come in from Mexico on the eastbound side. But the money goes back on the west.
While both agencies have made some big drug cases, we spotted both the 23rd and DICE staging time and time again with their backs to the drug side.
In fact, a review of daily activity sheets kept by the 23rd discovered that, when officers noted the location of their traffic stops, there were 10 times as many stops on the money side.”
Seems like your noble, altruistic public servants are very concerned about making money.
“And you haven’t stopped McDonalds, so all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that other people agree with you: Just like your situation with the President. Neither vote is effective in the least.”
Whether or not i stop mcdonalds is irrelevant to whether or not i can withdraw my support for it. Which is more detrimental, a business losing a single customer or a politician losing a single vote? Its rhetorical, dont bother answering. In addition, just so im perfectly clear on this, your ok with the president bombing anyone anywhere on the planet at anytime for a few years because you get a vote that by any statistical anaylsis is fucking worthless. Ontop of that you find this preferable to corporations that, last time i checked your nonsensical rambling were greedy and because of that would have no interest in engaging in wars since they cost millions of dollars per day. Your preference is for a mass murdering orginization to protect you from walmart. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your perspective is flawed?
@ekerya: So farmers will look out for their own self interest when avoiding jail time or fines, but not when they sell a faulty product and risk losing business.
Are you purposely dense? The whole point of that discussion is that farmers can sell a faulty product and NOBODY WILL KNOW. They don’t risk “losing business” if their product kills a few random sandwich eaters, or an elderly person with a compromised immune system, or a toddler. Nobody blames them because nobody can possibly know what caused the cancer, illness, sickness or ultimate death. The combinatorics between wheat farming and the sandwich on the plate at the restaurant completely obscures their responsibility and makes it impossible to assign blame.
So the proper statement is this:
So farmers will look out for their own self interest when avoiding jail time or fines, but not when they know they can hide their crimes and never be caught.
To which I say, YES, punishment deters crime, and no punishment lets crime run rampant.
@Ekeyra: And you haven’t stopped McDonalds, so all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that other people agree with you: Just like your situation with the President. Neither vote is effective in the least.
Heres the problem with your theory tony, the one with the capacity to do the most damage is the one you want in charge of the less dangerous one.
You’ve got the insanity backwards. The government is stronger than the corporations by design. The government is elected, the corporations are not. The government can be changed by the people, and every election some pols that really wanted their seats still lose them.
Your complaint is about majority rule, and your solution is minority rule.
In your system a corporation cannot be controlled or bankrupted by a majority of the people, because it may serve and thrive on a tiny sliver of a demographic. I have worked for corporations designed to serve the Fortune 500, for example. In your system, if 99.9% of the population thinks they are criminals, why should they care?
If they pollute the gulf, endanger the health and lives of workers, enslave others overseas, hire contractors or mercenaries they know are committing crimes but with sufficient deniability to avoid prosecution, what do we do?
Nothing. Because in your system corporations are answerable only to their customers, and that is almost never the populace at large.
Yours is a system of minority rule by a few thousand CEO’s and wealthy barons, exploiting workers and screwing customers and suppliers.
Democracy may not be fast enough for your taste, but it is faster than ZERO control, which would be the effect of your applied philosophy.
“The FDA is different, because it can inspect before all these combinations of mixing, grinding, and baking have occurred. It can inspect at a point where there IS just one man (or corporation) responsible, and that is before the wheat is even harvested. And if the farmer knows that inspection will occur, they are less likely to risk jail or huge fines by using an illegal pesticide in the first place”
So farmers will look out for their own self interest when avoiding jail time or fines, but not when they sell a faulty product and risk losing business. Do you have any concept of how people’s minds work or you just make stuff up?
“No that is not the real question, because we are not limited to controlling only one type of sociopath, so there is no need to choose between them. We should try to address both problems.”
Heres the problem with your theory tony, the one with the capacity to do the most damage is the one you want in charge of the less dangerous one. That makes absolutely no sense. Its like hiring king kong to catch a mugger when you know full well king kong can level the city in his pursuit and the mugger cannot. For a real world example, suppose i dont like the president dropping bombs on people around the globe. What are my options of stopping him? Wait 4 years and cast my vote and cross my fingers? Thats my recourse? On the other hand, if i dont like mcdonalds marketing to children and using a clown to sell them hamburgers, i can decide not to eat at mcdondalds and there is nothing they can do to force me to.
Tony C:
I shop at grocery stores who have people who visit the farms they purchase from. They do that because that is what the consumer wants. Is it 100% effective? Of course not, 50,000 people still die from colon cancer despite the best efforts of the FDA.
Tony C:
“Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States when men and women are considered separately, and the second leading cause when both sexes are combined. It is expected to cause about 49,380 deaths during 2011.
The death rate (the number of deaths per 100,000 people per year) from colorectal cancer has been dropping in both men and women for more than 20 years. There are a number of likely reasons for this. One is that polyps are being found by screening and removed before they can develop into cancers. Screening is also allowing more colorectal cancers to be found earlier when the disease is easier to cure. In addition, treatment for colorectal cancer has improved over the last several years. As a result, there are now more than 1 million survivors of colorectal cancer in the United States.”
The FDA isn’t responsible for reducing colon cancer in the US but screening is.
By the way what is the pesticide you are talking about?
“Why is it that people that believe in unrestrained oppression and endangerment of others call it “freedom”?”
Because government is the only entity which can engage in unrestrained oppression and endangerment of others. Maybe the Chinese restaurant down the street can make a few people sick or even kill someone from food poisoning but they don’t do it on purpose and it happens in spite of the health department. But once the word gets out, they are done.
That certificate of cleanliness on the wall of a restaurant doesn’t mean a thing. It is a symbol, it will not protect anyone from food poisoning.
@Roco: No but if people get sick from a particular farm do you think they are going to go back to that farmer?
I see, just forget the entire point of the illustration and try to turn this into a problem the free market can handle.
The point is you don’t know who the farmer was. The point was that you didn’t get sick, you died. The point is that if you don’t control the crime at the source, which must be done without the consent of the criminal, you cannot control this crime. The point is you cannot even know it was wheat that gave you cancer, and even if you somehow magically did know that, it is impossible to know which grain of wheat that speck of flour came from and which farm produced that grain of wheat.
But apparently you cannot comprehend any of those points, so you will just pretend that all consumers in America drive to wheat farms to buy all the wheat they will consume directly. In fact you have to mean all the food they will consume, period. You must get to all kinds of ranches, groves and fifty farms a week! When do you have time to work, Roco?
@Roco: Why is it people who believe in freedom are the ones who are brainwashed?
Why is it that people that believe in unrestrained oppression and endangerment of others call it “freedom”?
@ekeyra: If this is true it makes no more sense to trust the FDA more than anyone else because they have to work with the same limitations on knowledge as every other human being.
Ah, but they do not. The answer to your dilemma lies in combinatorics. Wheat is a fungible commodity; one bushel of hard winter wheat is like another, they can be mixed, and ground into a high gluten flour for breads. The microscopic grain of flour that contains the pesticidal carcinogen that is going to give you colon cancer cannot be identified or traced back to the farmer that decided his crop was worth more than your life. The chemical penetrated the a cell wall in your colon, killed a few nucleotides that prevented apoptosis and ultimately caused runaway growth; but it leaves no fingerprint or signature behind to tell us what happened, and the rest of the wheat passed from your system weeks or months before the tumor is evident.
The FDA is different, because it can inspect before all these combinations of mixing, grinding, and baking have occurred. It can inspect at a point where there IS just one man (or corporation) responsible, and that is before the wheat is even harvested. And if the farmer knows that inspection will occur, they are less likely to risk jail or huge fines by using an illegal pesticide in the first place.
The FDA can detect the crime and catch the criminal because if the farmers want to sell a consumable product they have to, by law, submit to inspection, and the FDA can do that (with drugs, milk, meat, produce, nuts and grains) at a point where responsibility can be assigned and crimes can be prosecuted (and sometimes recalls issued), and private citizens cannot do that, for lack of information. A colon cancer victim cannot even know IF a crime was committed against him, or his misfortune is the result of a random cosmic ray, because the results might easily present identically.
Tony C:
Why do you think someone brainwashed ekeyra? Maybe it is you that has had your brain washed. Why is it people who believe in freedom are the ones who are brainwashed?
Do you know what actually reduced lost time accidents in the construction industry? It wasn’t OSHA, it was insurance rebates for safe companies. In other words the free market.
Tony C:
“You can’t do that by contract law, because the farmer knows you WILL buy food sooner or later, and (as I have said before) they are not going to sign anything with anyone that makes them liable in any way.”
No but if people get sick from a particular farm do you think they are going to go back to that farmer? Do you think Whole Foods will continue to buy from that farmer?
Farmers should self regulate because it is in their best interest to do so. If they don’t, they will be gone soon enough.
You seem to think business people are just out to screw everyone to make a buck. It doesn’t work that way, you have to supply a good service at a reasonable price every single day. There is no resting on laurels. In the free market, yesterday doesn’t matter.
@ekeyra: The real question is which one is in a position to do more damage,
No that is not the real question, because we are not limited to controlling only one type of sociopath, so there is no need to choose between them. We should try to address both problems.
@ekeyra: If you are unaware, UL is essentially mandatory; OSHA (a government organization) mandates that products be tested by a safety laboratory they have inspected, tested, and approved, UL is one of those laboratories. (Plus UL has been and remains non-profit for the product safety arm of its business).
UL doesn’t disprove my claim, it supports it: The GOVERNMENT is the final authority to trust. At least in theory, UL can be trusted because the government can be expected to do a fair inspection and approval of their operations, and an officially non-profit organization can be expected to provide their services at very close to their costs.
Whoever brainwashed you did a good job, your head is chock full of half-told stories twisted to support a false claim.
ekeyra:
“If this is so then why do you have faith in the FDA? Are they staffed with superheroes?”
Excellent point. Of course they are not. So self interest is bad and no interest at all is good. I never could figure that out.
It would seem to me that the individual trying to stay in business has more to lose or gain by operating ethically and with the interest of the customer front and center in their mind. Since the customer puts food on their table. The clerk at the FDA gets paid whether he does a lousy job or a good job.
The market is a harsh master and does not suffer fools well. Unlike government which seems to be what it does best.
Tony thinks because the clerk at the FDA does not make a profit he is a noble actor and his actions are unsullied by “greed”.
Tony,
Your conclusions about sociopaths are also completely off the mark. Who cares what type of sociopath is attracted to which enterprise. The real question is which one is in a position to do more damage, the sociopath running a country or the sociopath running a business?
“His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the inflictions of people working for governments than have died in battle.”
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE5.HTM
Tony,
None of your ramblings answered my question. Your claim was that to protect consumers requires, and im quoting “an infinite amount of information that is impossible to acquire, and a prescience about dangers that nobody has”. If this is true it makes no more sense to trust the FDA more than anyone else because they have to work with the same limitations on knowledge as every other human being.
Also this whole thing is my fault. I should have stopped paying attention when you asserted that businesses dont care if they kill their customers. Cause who cares if you have customers? On top of all that, its completely irrelevant who you choose to trust as you have no authority to impose that decision on everyone else, no matter how many people agree with you.
Also underwriters laboratories proves your entire perspective wrong and theyve been at it for over a hundred years.
“The very existence of the Lab debunks the common civics-text view that, without government intervention, private businesses would seek profit without regard for safety; thus, bureaucrats have to police markets to impose a balance between private interests and the common good. The government, according to this view, is the only thing standing between us and unceasing fatal accidents.
The truth is the opposite. The market is well equipped to regulate itself, and does a fine job of it. It’s the government that operates without oversight. To discover the quality and value of products, no one would trust the advice of the scandal-ridden Commerce Department or the Federal Trade Commission.”
“Many government regulations, especially at the state level, merely mimic the building codes and insurance requirements of the Lab.”
http://mises.org/daily/3440
@puzzling: If large organizations removed from the consequences of their decisions are inclined to power-driven, sociopathic behavior then it must follow that government is the most malicious actor of all.
Not exactly, but I sympathize with the sentiment; and certainly a very similar dynamic is at work in our government. It is not precisely the same because you state the principle wrong.
The corporations aren’t power driven, they are profit driven, and these are two different things. A profit driven sociopath is more like a Randian. They would prefer to collect the money behind the scenes and for their own safety (self-interest) have as few people know as possible. The fewer people that know they are the engine of economic destruction, the less likely any retaliation will occur against them personally.
The sociopaths that rise to the top in government are egomaniacal sociopaths, a little more complicated than the garden variety corporate sociopath. However, I agree they are power hungry, and I also think that is the source of much of our corruption. But I come to a different conclusion than the one I infer from your post; I don’t think the answer is to get rid of the idea of government. It still serves us more than it harms us.
@ekeyra: If this is so then why do you have faith in the FDA?
Because unlike you or I, the FDA can inspect providers on demand, and the FDA can prohibit them from selling a drug that has not been tested for safety, and the FDA can demand a full list of ingredients in anything sold even if they keep that information confidential. The reason this can work is that the FDA is the government and is neither a competitor or a third party watchdog that is trying to negotiate access and terms of disclosure with people that have zero self-interest in disclosing anything, ever, about how their operations work.
The government can test wheat and soil to catch wheat farmers that are using pesticides that are unsafe for consumers, or drugs on livestock that are unsafe for consumers, or whatever. The government can punish violators without having to produce any proof of direct harm. You can’t do that by contract law, because the farmer knows you WILL buy food sooner or later, and (as I have said before) they are not going to sign anything with anyone that makes them liable in any way. Just like software companies get away with, the farmers will have a contract that says, “You buy and use or resell or give away this product at your own risk and you assume all liability and you agree without reservation that I cannot be held responsible under any circumstances whatsoever until the end of time. Sign here.”
I actually think our FDA is corrupted by the free marketeers and corrupted government, so I do not trust them completely. But I trust them more than I trust the free market, because they at least have the power to protect us, and the free market does not.
If large organizations removed from the consequences of their decisions are inclined to power-driven, sociopathic behavior then it must follow that government is the most malicious actor of all.
As for the FDA, big pharma likely prefers the presence of the FDA because it creates very high costs for competitors to enter the market, raises drug prices, slows the required pace of innovation, and limits their liability.