-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The Florida Chamber of Congress cites out-of-date error rates and concerns over identity theft as the basis for their objection to mandatory E-Verify.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.
“Are you so stupid you cannot think in anything but black and white? A business enterprise has income and expenses it must pay with part of that income.
That doesn’t mean it (or you) have nothing, it means that 100% of your revenue does not belong to you, you have incurred unavoidable expenses in the course of generating the revenue, and thus what belongs to you is the difference between your revenue and your expenses.”
You are unequivocably wrong. First I am in no position to determine what expenses I incur this way, and thus have no control over what costs i determine worth the expenditure and what costs are not. Second, if i am merely recieving the remainder after a sum has been extracted that was not of my choosing then i am not the true owner, I am merely the recipient of a gift from the true owners who decide how to spend it.
“But who knows what you think? You have once again dodged the question of how YOU want to enforce the law, and how YOU want to pay for it. I suspect that is because YOU DON’T KNOW, you just want to rail against “Majority Rule” even if you have no alternative plan whatsoever.”
Not knowing what I think hasnt really stopped you from making wild guesses has it? It doesnt matter how I would shape society since I am not a king or an emperor nor do I wish to be one. Does it make my criticisms of power invalid simply because i do not dream of imposing my will on my fellow human beings?
@Ekeyra: Also I never mentioned “unanimous rule”
You have repeatedly attacked majority rule, by the same logic you cannot possibly believe in minority rule, so please tell me, what is left?
So thats it then. Nothing is truly mine, I merely have what others allow me to keep.
Are you so stupid you cannot think in anything but black and white? A business enterprise has income and expenses it must pay with part of that income.
That doesn’t mean it (or you) have nothing, it means that 100% of your revenue does not belong to you, you have incurred unavoidable expenses in the course of generating the revenue, and thus what belongs to you is the difference between your revenue and your expenses.
It does NOT mean that “nothing is yours,” it means that your ENTIRE PAYCHECK is not yours. And just in case you are a fucking irresponsible idiot that thinks like a five year old, the government makes sure you pay the majority of your share of the expenses of society by getting your employers to deduct it from your paycheck before you get it.
[My life] surely would not continue without them [society] so if they wish it to cease it is truly theirs to end isnt it?
You mistake dependence for ownership, and you mistake yourself for inanimate property that can be owned. When my daughter was utterly dependent upon me, I did not regard it as my right to end her life. If my mother becomes utterly dependent upon me, as she may, I will not regard it as my right to end her life either.
I do not think the right to life or freedom is inviolate. I think those are presumed but can be lost through crime. But I do think humans are born with those rights, and I think the majority of people agree, so I don’t think a society ruled by the majority can be logically consistent and arbitrarily deprive a citizen of life or liberty.
They can execute or incarcerate them for crimes, but if there is a reason the act is not “arbitrary.”
But those are MY axioms: I think majority rule has to be consistent, and logical, and apply to everybody equally, whether they are in the majority or in the minority.
If you want to start from someplace different than that, then sure, you might be unsafe and they might kill you.
But who knows what you think? You have once again dodged the question of how YOU want to enforce the law, and how YOU want to pay for it. I suspect that is because YOU DON’T KNOW, you just want to rail against “Majority Rule” even if you have no alternative plan whatsoever.
Tony,
“Your paycheck is your revenue; and the taxes taken from it are the expenses of your little enterprise you call a job, to pay for the infrastructure that lets that job exist.”
So thats it then. Nothing is truly mine, I merely have what others allow me to keep. How enlightening, here I was thinking I had some control over my life but I am merely at the whim of my betters. I shall live my life accordingly, seeing as how I have no responsibility for my own actions.
You support mob rule as a defense against murder, but what happens when the tables are turned and the mob calls for blood? Are they to be obeyed because they are the mob and my life is subject to their whims? Nothing I have is truly mine, so what defense can I mount to their confiscation of my life? It surely would not continue without them so if they wish it to cease it is truly theirs to end isnt it?
“Okay, fine: PROVE IT.
You cannot prove it”
Thats just hilarious
Also I never mentioned “unanimous rule” or objectivism so please stop bringing them up when you address me.
Awwww.
Isn’t that special!
More self-rationalization and self-aggrandizement.
I didn’t say you didn’t have a family, Randie. Lots of sociopaths do. I said your I feel sorry for your family.
And I do.
Because they have to put up with your greedy selfishness as a role model.
I’m also willing to bet that your family even loves you. But do they like you? I kinda doubt it. Yep. You clearly don’t have to be either a genius or a good person to breed.
As to my future?
Thanks for your faux-concern, but my future is going to be just fine.
I now return to you to the drubbing your inferior selfish and self-centered venal philosophy that Tony was administering, Mr. Makes Up The Meanings Of Words.
Sociopathic environmentalists. lol
Mr. Ill Mannered is Laughing:
I think you lose most of them sport and this one to else you wouldnt be reduced to calling me a slave owner apologist.
Concerning family, at least I have one. Children and a wife. All 3 love me and vice versa. In fact my son and I are on our way to Costco to buy food for a BBQ with some friends.
From your posts here, you dine alone or with cats. I rarely eat alone. Now tell me agian who the sociopath is?
Sucks to be a loser doesnt it Mr. Ill Mannered churl. No wife, no children probably most of your family steers clear of you because you are such an a$$hole. Enjoy your cats, I have grandchildren in my future apparently all you have is a nasty cat box to change.
I wont be thinking of you when they are bouncing on my knee. And when I die, I will have my children, my wife, my grandchildren gathered around to send me on my way. What will you have? A bunch of fucking cats eating your decomposing corpse because no one bothered to check on you. Happened recently to a person I know, he was an a$$hole too, just like you.
Enjoy your future bud. Hopefully you can turn it around.
Just consider me Tiny Tim as I say God Bless you Buddha is Laughing, I truly hope you can know peace and happiness in however many years you may have left.
Tony C:
we have a shit pot full of oil shales.
”
Estimated U.S. oil shale reserves total an astonishing 1.5 trillion barrels of oil – or more than five times the
stated reserves of Saudi Arabia.”
As far as coal goes, people are not forced to work in a coal mine. Some will take the risk and it is there right to do so. Theoretically they can ask for higher wages. But with your version of economics we would consistently have high unemployment so people would be forced to take dangerous jobs for low wages.
It really is quite simple, capitalism reduces or eliminates poverty, socialism/communism, collectivism in general causes poverty and with it human misery.
Tony C:
“If I were endorsed by a hundred verifiable PhDs from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT,…”
Then I would be sure you were wrong.
@Roco: We do not have vast reserves of shale oil; and the (inadequate) restrictions we have on coal are there to prevent the health hazard it presents to the many for the profit of the few, that do not have to pay for the health damage they provably cause.
100% of my education was accomplished by attending classes in person; and although I have had contract clients in Phoenix and worked there on occasion, I have never attended their university either in person or remotely.
But why would you believe any of that? I avoid these backgrounders because I see no relevance to the discussion of philosophical law. I don’t care if you have a PhD or a J.D. or if you are an engineer or a janitor (I’ve been both). Plus, I could be lying, or you could, and there is no way to prove anything and maintain anonymity.
That is not true of pure argument; the argument and logic are revealed in the post. Either you have an argument or you don’t; and so far you don’t.
The point of an education is to teach the student how to make NEW arguments and justify OLD arguments. We don’t teach first graders how to add up an existing list of numbers, we teach the the principles of addition so they can add up ANY list of numbers, even brand new lists of numbers.
We don’t teach students how to make machines that already exists; those are solved problems. We only study those solutions and build those things as exercises, to illustrate principles that can hopefully be used to solve NEW problems with NEW machines.
I don’t give a shit if somebody has a PhD, I know dozens of idiot PhDs, and dozens of Electrical Engineers I wouldn’t trust to wire my house. With others I know, I would literally trust my life to their devices, and all they got was the Bachelor’s degree (combined with a lot of real world experience).
If an education fails to produce a person that can argue their points from axiomatic principles then the education, IMO, has failed, even if the degrees were awarded. In other words, the proof is in the pudding.
I don’t know Buddha’s real identity and do not need to know: I have a relatively high degree of certainty Buddha has been successfully trained in the law. Not because his posts claim that, but because to my eye, while many of his posts are for his own entertainment (like my own), many of his posts also exhibit evidence of that training.
Either you follow an argument or you don’t, you find the flaws or you don’t, you refute the logic or you don’t.
I do not want you (or my peers or any students I have ever taught) to accept any argument I make without understanding it, I think that fucks up the world. If you defer to Turley’s arguments because of his education and position, you are a fool. If you defer to Obama’s arguments because of his education and position, you are a fool.
If revealing my education and position would convince you I am right, I have won nothing except to prove you are incapable of independent thought and that you just have faith in the judgment of other people you do not even know. If I were endorsed by a hundred verifiable PhDs from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and MIT, would you suddenly believe me? Because if that holds sway with you, you are an idiot surrendering your own sense of logic to blind faith in (get this) the majority judgment of academics.
If revealing my education and position would NOT convince you, what purpose does it serve? Nothing but endangering my position, and letting you conduct ad hominem attacks on me, which I suspect is your only alternative since you cannot find a crack in my logic.
An ad hominem embrace of an argument is just as invalid as an ad hominem attack on an argument. By maintaining anonymity I hope to prevent either situation; my arguments can live or die on their own merits. Just because you and ekeyra do not accept them does not mean they are dead; I know others are reading them, and they are welcome to use the parts they like and leave behind the parts they don’t. That is how it should be; you are useful foils to argue against that I think help me increase the argumentative ammunition people have to stop people like you.
Thanks for participating.
He Who Posts As Others Than Roco,
Don’t get mad at me because you’re a venal Randian sociopath who doesn’t have a good grasp on the English language, Ol’ Mr. Greed Is Good.
Or do.
See if I give a damn.
BTW, how does it feel to be perpetually outmaneuvered by a dumbass? I’m asking because since you think I’m a dumbass, you should know. You’ve done a nice job supporting the CSA/Slavery apologists simply because they don’t like me and can’t defeat me either. Just shows how shallow you really are and how petty when repeatedly beaten. That is unless you are also a racist Confederate apologist in addition to being an objectivist. In which case also nice job for displaying your true colors once again: you don’t care who bleeds as long as you can get the green out of it.
Tsk, tsk, tsk, greed boy.
Sucks to be you.
But as bad as it sucks to be you, I’m sure it sucks worse to be those burdened with being stuck with you in real life like your family.
Ta-ta, propaganda puppet.
@ekeyra: Yes you have asserted that majorities should rule but you have yet to spell out why.
While you assert principles that are both contradictory and assert conditions that are counter to known behaviors of humans, and never specify HOW you are going to enforce the simple rights you claim people have. You believe in magic, I believe in practical applications.
Unless one assumes that majorities are to be obeyed simply by virtue of their numbers, you have yet to make any argument for their right to impose their will.
My argument faces the reality that for LARGE populations, by which I mean something over 4000 adults or so, and which are the only ones I care about in talking about “societies”; it is in practice impossible to rule by unanimous vote (unless the unanimous vote is “I will obey the King so his thugs won’t kill me.”)
This is because the murderers, thieves, rapists and other criminals are among those that must give their consent. If we start that society de novo, with no laws whatsoever (as societies DID begin), there is no way to outlaw anything except by the force of the majority restraining those that would have their way by force.
You can argue semantics all you want, but deciding that murder is illegal, and punishing murderers, can be described as mob rule. It is a majority of people imposing their will by force in a bid to prevent an individual from acting on their natural human rage, jealousy, or greed.
Outlawing murder and punishing it is a majority using the threat of overwhelming force to win something for their own good (physical safety) at the expense of those individuals that were earning a good living killing others (don’t forget that in this hypothetically lawless group murder is not yet outlawed). Those individuals are so good at their job that they say they don’t need or want the protection of the mob, and thus they refuse to agree that murder should be an illegal business tactic. They say, “We should all fend for ourselves, our own defense, and let the best fighter [points at self] win.”
Ahh, but the MOB votes them down, and the majority rules.
The next pawn you advance is some kind of fundamental, self-evident principle, which I will call an axiom.
For example, the proposition about “property rights” or Objectivism, or some other philosophical point.
Okay, fine: PROVE IT.
You cannot prove it; because your axioms are founded in assertions that rely upon majority acceptance, and not all of us accept them. I for one reject both the libertarian “property rights” and Objectivism, on logical grounds.
But the same goes for my axioms: Not one of the axioms you OR I rely upon will get unanimous approval of all adult Americans.
None of them are truly fundamental.
For example, why should people have the right to property? Take a fresh Earth that supports life, sprinkle a few million naked adult humans on it, and what “right” do any of them have to a single square foot of land?
Anything you say is a made up rule that some of them will disagree with. I can say, “wherever they got sprinkled, that belongs to them.” So the guys that woke up in the middle of New Mexico look at the guys that woke up in Napa Valley and say, “We object!”
No sane criminal will consent to being imprisoned or put to death or surrendering property, so all laws are enforced by the majority over the individual.
The idea that you can form anything with unanimous consent is a fantasy. I don’t think there is any point in arguing whether everybody will agree or not, they simply won’t.
There will always be people that will harm others, physically, financially or emotionally, if they feel the risks are worth the rewards. It will always be the Majority that chooses which of these actions to punish, and those are the laws.
Your criticism here is pointless; if the majority cannot use force to compel others to abstain from harmful acts, then your system is just lawless anarchy. I reject that system, and the fact that you do not have unanimous consent for your scheme of “unanimous consent” means it is stillborn: I and those like me (the vast MAJORITY of humanity) will never consent to it. By its own rules that scheme cannot exist while sane people are drawing breath.
Mr. Ill Mannered is Laughing:
wonderful.
A tip of the hat to Brent Waller and Jeb the Reb.
buddhatard:
the environmental movement is full of socialist and communists. You dumb asses cant get any traction with your political and economic policies so you scare the shit out of people and distort markets which in turn cause environmental disasters.
Companies like BP have to drill in 5,000′ of water instead of 500′ and we have an accident which is not surprising. Then the environmentalists sit back and say see we told you so, drilling for oil is bad business.
People that care more for a snail darter than a human being are the true sociopaths. Fuck the snail darter and the spotted owl if it means putting people to work with decent paying jobs.
I see you care more for animals than you do human beings. But that is pretty much what the left is all about, they think human beings are a cancer on the world. We randies think they should own the world.
Now run along like a good little sociopath and kick a cat or a small businessman trying to earn a living.
By the way no one likes pollution and guess what, technology tends to improve and take care of that. Environmentalists would have us living in mud huts burning cow dung for fuel. And that is where we would end up with your stupid economic policies.
And I’d say if you would be truthful about what your economic policies would bring no one would ever vote for a democrat again. Well maybe the 25-30% of hard core liberals would.
You are nothing but a dumb ass. Ole Brent and Jeb the Reb were kicking your ass something fierce, I was rolling. Bad manners, they had your number. roflmao.
I shall hence forth refer to you as Mr. Ill Mannered is Laughing. LOL!
Sociopathic.
sociopathic \ˌsō-sē-ə-ˈpa-thik, ˌsō-sh(ē-)ə-\, adj.,
: of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior or exhibiting antisocial personality disorder
Environmentalists.
environmentalist \in-ˈvī-rə(n)-mənt-tə-ləst\, n.,
1: an advocate of environmentalism
2: one concerned about environmental quality especially of the human environment with respect to the control of pollution
Yeah.
People who want to protect the environment – that thing in which we all have to live in – are somehow sociopaths in your Ayn Rand twisted melon.
BZZZZZZZZZZ!
Wrong answer, Randie!
By definition.
That oxymoron was particularly insipid and ham-fisted even for you.
I’d say English works better when you actually know what the words mean, but that matters little to a propagandist for corporate oil such as yourself.
Tony C:
the only problem with your contention about oil reserves is that the United States has huge oil reserves in the form of shale oil and actual oil. We also have one of the largest deposits of coal on earth but cannot mine for it.
Sociopathic environmentalists wont let us drill in our own country because they like to screw people of color by drilling for oil in their countries.
At least Cheney isnt a racist like the sociopathic environmentalists.
At least I have a kernel of truth in my argument, we do have huge deposits of coal and shale oil.
In reading your discussion with ekeyra, I am amazed that you have a PhD. Did you get it from the University of Phonynix?
@ekeyra: I don’t see it as McD v Obama; in fact I said they are the same thing, and they are just stand-ins for corporations and government that YOU brought up. But you provide the answer with this: but at least I retain control of my dollar fifty and spend it how i see fit.
For you it is all about the money, and nothing else. You think the $1.50 the government takes is “yours” when it never was. You seem to have a simple-minded inability to distinguish between revenue and profit. McD has $25B in revenue, but they pay out $20B in total expenses to keep their outfit going. That is 80% of their revenue.
Your paycheck is your revenue; and the taxes taken from it are the expenses of your little enterprise you call a job, to pay for the infrastructure that lets that job exist.
“I expect public servants to be realists that want to do a fair 40 hour a week job and get paid a fair wage”
Apperently they have a divergent opinion of what is fair. Imagine that.
“Votes are more important to Obama than the $1.50 profit on your $7.50 lunch at McDonald’s.”
Your response to this sheds much needed light on your perspective. You see the entire issue as mc donalds vs obama. The perspectives you ignore are mcdonalds vs the individual and obama vs the individual. In the case of mcdonalds vs the individual, yes not spend a dollar fifty on a hamburger doesnt go a long way to bankrupting a multibillion dollar corporation, but at least I retain control of my dollar fifty and spend it how i see fit. As for obama vs the individual voter, why should he care? He will get your taxes one way or another. If they cant directly confiscate it they will inflate away its purchasing power.
“It is the corporations WAGING wars, you fool.”
That may very well be the case, but you ignore the mechanism they use to wage it. Our socialized national defense gives them not only a revenue stream outside of any free market phenomenom, but also a cover for their actions. Our government justifies its aggression however it sees fit and is supplied by weapons manufacturers it pays in confiscated tax dollars. This is as far removed from a free market as you can get. Yes a few privileged companies may compete for government contracts but every dollar they earn has been taken by force or stolen through inflation. It also shields them from retaliation for their actions by laying the blame for their aggression at the feet of the us military and by association the american public. I dont recall the terrorists on 9/11 flying airliners into a raytheon skunkworks hangar, a kellog – root warehouse, a grummum northrop munitions factory. Yet the free market you fear so much would neccessitate that for these companies to engage in these actions they would take on not only the financial burden of their occupation, but the risk of violent and costly retaliation for their aggression because they would have no country to hide behind. The patrols that terrorize iraqi citizens would be emblazened with their corporate sponsors instead of the us flag. What potential investor is going to put his money up voluntarily for such a suicidal venture?
“I am defending the idea of government and majority rule which you are attacking.”
And doing a poor job of it. Yes you have asserted that majorities should rule but you have yet to spell out why. Unless one assumes that majorities are to be obeyed simply by virtue of their numbers, you have yet to make any argument for their right to impose their will. There is no morality or justice inherent in mobs, no matter how large their number is. Throughout most of history just the opposite was true.
@ekeyra: It is the corporations WAGING wars, you fool. It is the military-industrial complex waging war on the Middle East, for profit, paid for by US.
It is their sociopathic need for profits. It was the point of the Kuwait war; I think it was the point of the Iraq war: Cheney the sociopath wanted (for profit) to break the back of the equally sociopathic OPEC and he thought he would do that by getting rid of the sociopathic Saddam and, in true sociopathic style, setting up a nice sociopathic puppet government in Iraq that he could direct to sell oil cheap to his sociopathic corporation (Halliburton) that would then mark it up like crazy and sell to us Americans.
I think the Iraq war was a failed power play by sociopaths exploiting the cover of 9/11 in an attempt to steal the largest proven oil reserves in the world. Big things don’t need big explanations.
You seem to insist I am defending our current government and form of government, I am not. It blows. You will get little argument from me on whether the government or police or courts are corrupt. I am defending the idea of government and majority rule which you are attacking. It does no good to point at corruption in the FDA, it doesn’t change the fact that the function of something like the FDA is a logical necessity, and no free market mechanism exists to replace it. Just as no free market mechanism exists to replace the military (another form of defense for citizens) because a paid military works just fine but there is no plausible way to have a profit-driven military.
@ekeyra: Whether or not i stop mcdonalds is irrelevant to whether or not i can withdraw my support for it.
You can withdraw your support from Obama, too.
Votes are more important to Obama than the $1.50 profit on your $7.50 lunch at McDonald’s. They will earn $5B this year, that will be two or three billion sales. Obama’s election will swing on about 1/10,000 of that amount, we could say a single vote for Obama is the equivalent of about 10,000 sales for McDonald’s. You have much more leverage with Obama in terms of making a difference.
Plus, Obama’s success or failure depends on getting within a few points of 50% of the votes win, McD has about 28% of the market and could survive on much less: The Wendy’s / Arby’s restaurants have less than 4% of the market, and are still everywhere.
Giant corporations care far less about you than a politician that needs your vote. McDonald’s has a few hundred life-long customers die every day, never to buy another order of Fries, and they take that in stride. Whether you mount a lifelong boycott or not isn’t on their radar.
@ekeyra: What Obama is doing is criminal, IMO an impeachable unconstitutional offense. IMO a war crime. So you might as well be telling me that Democracy and Government cannot work because under both people have gotten away with murder and theft and rape. Of course your system doesn’t eliminate murder and theft and rape, and in fact your system makes it easier for everybody to get away with murder and theft and rape.
As for cops having to earn money, I think that should be outlawed too, but it has become a necessity due to the tax structure and the cowardice of politicians. I think 100% of law enforcement expenses should be paid by direct taxes for that purpose. I am not a fan of fines at all, I think fines are automatically discriminatory based on wealth. I do not think anybody should be able to ignore a law just because they can afford to do it, either a law is worth costing people time or it isn’t, and time is inherently more equalizing. Even if the time was just sitting around in something like a doctor’s waiting room with a cop present, I imagine we’d have fewer speeders if speeding cost people four hours in a room for every 5 mph over, instead of just making them write a check.
*************** TOPIC CHANGE ***************
I never claimed public servants would be noble or altruistic; in fact I believe the opposite. I expect public servants to be realists that want to do a fair 40 hour a week job and get paid a fair wage, and if they have some fantasy rags to riches pursuit, accomplish that in the evenings and weekends and on vacations.