Daily Kos: Iraq "an absolute replay of Vietnam" -- Hagel

So says the conservative Nebraska Republican and Vietnam vet.

Calling conditions in Iraq "an absolute replay of Vietnam," Sen. Chuck Hagel said Friday that the Pentagon is making a mistake by beefing up American forces in Iraq.

U.S. soldiers have become "easy targets" in a country that has descended into "absolute anarchy," the Nebraska Republican and Vietnam combat veteran said in an interview with The World-Herald.

He said that in the previous 48 hours, he had received three telephone calls from four-star generals who were "beside themselves" over the Pentagon's reversal of plans to bring tens of thousands of soldiers home this fall.

Instead, top Pentagon officials are suspending military rotations and adding troops in Iraq. The Pentagon has estimated that the buildup will increase the number of U.S. troops from about 130,000 to 135,000.

"That isn't going to do any good. It's going to have a worse effect," Hagel said. "They're destroying the United States Army."

Read the whole speech to the Brookings Institution.

Proposition 89--At last, Clean Money is on the ballot in California

Thursday night we had our working group meeting for Clean Money. I was so heartened by the 23 people showed up on a working night, more than double our previous average. They volunteered to gather petition signatures, pass out information, hold house parties, get on the phone, write letters to the editor.

To find out what inspires their zeal, watch "The Road to Clean Elections," an inspiring video about how democracy is returning to Maine and Arizona, and will soon come to California.

If you're feeling a bit cynical about the fact that politicians nod their heads when they hear what we want and then go on to vote for what their big money campaign contributors want, this video is the cure.

If you live in California, you can help pass Proposition 89! Don't just vote for it, work for it. We'll need all the help we can get, because if we don't wage a huge grassroots campaign, the same big money interests that own our politicians are going to swamp the media with lies and distortions about how bad Clean Money is. And it is bad, but only for special-interest big spenders. They don't like the idea that we voters can buy our own politicians. For the rest of us, it's the reform that will change the face of politics in California, and after California, the nation.

No more Randy Cunninghams; no more Jack Abramoffs. Because our elected officials will be able to vote for what's good for the country, not what's good for their donors' bottom lines.

Old-time politicians will still be able to run for office using scads of special interest money if that's what they want, but we will be able to vote for others will choose to run a Clean Money campaign, using public funds that amount to a small fraction of the public money that our government now gives to the special-interest donors in the form of tax breaks, special "regulations," and outright subsidies.

Don't blame immigrants for healthcare crisis

It's not immigrants who are straining the emergency healthcare system--it's folks on Medicare and Medicaid, who can't find doctors because the government reimbursement rates are so low that most doctors won't take these patients; and the increasing number of people who can no longer afford private health insurance.

Furthermore,

High levels of ED [emergency department] use among Medicare beneficiaries and Medicaid enrollees are a potential source of increases in ED visit rates in the future. The aging of the population and retirement of the baby-boom generation will greatly increase Medicare enrollment and the proportion of the population who are elderly, who tend to have higher levels of ED use compared to other age groups.

Also, continued increases in private insurance costs could result in increases in both Medicaid and other public coverage of nonelderly people, as well as increases in the number of uninsured people. High use of EDs in Medicaid likely reflects in part little or no cost sharing for health services use, and perhaps lack of access to office-based physicians (because of low physician reimbursement rates under Medicaid)

-snip-

This study also shows that longer waiting times for appointments with physicians and a higher number of physician office visits relative to the number of physicians in a community increased ED visit levels, and the effects were greatest for poor people (Exhibit 2). In part, this may reflect the fact that physicians with full practices and constrained reimbursement from Medicaid and other payers were less willing to see low-income patients in their offices and more likely to refer such patients to the ED.

Original story here.

Why we need third-party mediators

Shamelessly stolen from the New York Times:

July 24, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
He Who Cast the First Stone Probably Didn’t
By DANIEL GILBERT

LONG before seat belts or common sense were particularly widespread, my family made annual trips to New York in our 1963 Valiant station wagon. Mom and Dad took the front seat, my infant sister sat in my mother’s lap and my brother and I had what we called “the wayback” all to ourselves.

In the wayback, we’d lounge around doing puzzles, reading comics and counting license plates. Eventually we’d fight. When our fight had finally escalated to the point of tears, our mother would turn around to chastise us, and my brother and I would start to plead our cases. “But he hit me first,” one of us would say, to which the other would inevitably add, “But he hit me harder.”

It turns out that my brother and I were not alone in believing that these two claims can get a puncher off the hook. In virtually every human society, “He hit me first” provides an acceptable rationale for doing that which is otherwise forbidden. Both civil and religious law provide long lists of behaviors that are illegal or immoral — unless they are responses in kind, in which case they are perfectly fine.

After all, it is wrong to punch anyone except a puncher, and our language even has special words — like “retaliation” and “retribution” and “revenge” — whose common prefix is meant to remind us that a punch thrown second is legally and morally different than a punch thrown first.

That’s why participants in every one of the globe’s intractable conflicts — from Ireland to the Middle East — offer the even-numberedness of their punches as grounds for exculpation.

The problem with the principle of even-numberedness is that people count differently. Every action has a cause and a consequence: something that led to it and something that followed from it. But research shows that while people think of their own actions as the consequences of what came before, they think of other people’s actions as the causes of what came later.

In a study conducted by William Swann and colleagues at the University of Texas, pairs of volunteers played the roles of world leaders who were trying to decide whether to initiate a nuclear strike. The first volunteer was asked to make an opening statement, the second volunteer was asked to respond, the first volunteer was asked to respond to the second, and so on. At the end of the conversation, the volunteers were shown several of the statements that had been made and were asked to recall what had been said just before and just after each of them.

The results revealed an intriguing asymmetry: When volunteers were shown one of their own statements, they naturally remembered what had led them to say it. But when they were shown one of their conversation partner’s statements, they naturally remembered how they had responded to it. In other words, volunteers remembered the causes of their own statements and the consequences of their partner’s statements.

What seems like a grossly self-serving pattern of remembering is actually the product of two innocent facts. First, because our senses point outward, we can observe other people’s actions but not our own. Second, because mental life is a private affair, we can observe our own thoughts but not the thoughts of others. Together, these facts suggest that our reasons for punching will always be more salient to us than the punches themselves — but that the opposite will be true of other people’s reasons and other people’s punches.

Examples aren’t hard to come by. Shiites seek revenge on Sunnis for the revenge they sought on Shiites; Irish Catholics retaliate against the Protestants who retaliated against them; and since 1948, it’s hard to think of any partisan in the Middle East who has done anything but play defense. In each of these instances, people on one side claim that they are merely responding to provocation and dismiss the other side’s identical claim as disingenuous spin. But research suggests that these claims reflect genuinely different perceptions of the same bloody conversation.

If the first principle of legitimate punching is that punches must be even-numbered, the second principle is that an even-numbered punch may be no more forceful than the odd-numbered punch that preceded it. Legitimate retribution is meant to restore balance, and thus an eye for an eye is fair, but an eye for an eyelash is not. When the European Union condemned Israel for bombing Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, it did not question Israel’s right to respond, but rather, its “disproportionate use of force.” It is O.K. to hit back, just not too hard.

Research shows that people have as much trouble applying the second principle as the first. In a study conducted by Sukhwinder Shergill and colleagues at University College London, pairs of volunteers were hooked up to a mechanical device that allowed each of them to exert pressure on the other volunteer’s fingers.

The researcher began the game by exerting a fixed amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. The first volunteer was then asked to exert precisely the same amount of pressure on the second volunteer’s finger. The second volunteer was then asked to exert the same amount of pressure on the first volunteer’s finger. And so on. The two volunteers took turns applying equal amounts of pressure to each other’s fingers while the researchers measured the actual amount of pressure they applied.

The results were striking. Although volunteers tried to respond to each other’s touches with equal force, they typically responded with about 40 percent more force than they had just experienced. Each time a volunteer was touched, he touched back harder, which led the other volunteer to touch back even harder. What began as a game of soft touches quickly became a game of moderate pokes and then hard prods, even though both volunteers were doing their level best to respond in kind.

Each volunteer was convinced that he was responding with equal force and that for some reason the other volunteer was escalating. Neither realized that the escalation was the natural byproduct of a neurological quirk that causes the pain we receive to seem more painful than the pain we produce, so we usually give more pain than we have received.

Research teaches us that our reasons and our pains are more palpable, more obvious and real, than are the reasons and pains of others. This leads to the escalation of mutual harm, to the illusion that others are solely responsible for it and to the belief that our actions are justifiable responses to theirs.

None of this is to deny the roles that hatred, intolerance, avarice and deceit play in human conflict. It is simply to say that basic principles of human psychology are important ingredients in this miserable stew. Until we learn to stop trusting everything our brains tell us about others — and to start trusting others themselves — there will continue to be tears and recriminations in the wayback.

Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of “Stumbling on Happiness.”

Why don't the Lebanese rise up against Hezbollah?

Hezbollah did one thing that was very smart. Could Israel apply those same tactics in the occupied territories?

Helping Hand of Hezbollah Emerging in South Lebanon
By SUSAN SACHS
New York Times
May 30, 2000

Bint Jbeil, Lebanon, May 30 -- The Hezbollah militia, known for its rockets and bombs, is back in southern Lebanon in force -- this time with an army of doctors, nurses, veterinarians, bulldozers, agronomists and engineers.

One week after the last Israeli soldiers abandoned the rocky hillside villages that they controlled for nearly 18 years, the business of keeping the water pumping and the hospitals running for an estimated 75,000 Lebanese civilians has been taken on by Hezbollah....

Also...
Koppel on NPR, 2006 (audio)

Ted Koppel says the Lebanese government is corrupt and unable to supply needed services to the Lebanese. Hezbollah, for all its evilness, is corruption free, and has stepped into the breach. Oddly, the Shiites in the south feel more loyalty to the organization that provides all those hospitals, schools and so forth than to the Lebanese government, which as always given short shrift to the Shia.

Why shouldn't Israel use a Hezbollah tactic?

What if the Israelis went into Gaza and the West Bank and built hospitals and schools, rebuilt destroyed neighborhoods, helped replant the olive orchards, and helped the Palestinians build factories and start industries?

Die-hard pro-Israelis will say that you can never trust the Palestinians, they are all terrorists and will never change, and so forth, but reconciliation efforts have shown that when Arab and Israeli get to know each other, they get along just fine. A lot of the mutual hate depends on them being isolated from each other.

Jews have been in Palestine for centuries. Many never left the region during the diaspora. It was a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution all over Europe. They felt safe in Palestine because Islam was very tolerant toward Jews until recent history. Ethnically, the Jews and Palestinians are practically the same people. Both name their kids Abraham (Avram, Ibrahim). Words from similar languages name a common hope for the Middle East: shalom (salaam).

All that began to change when the British got involved and made a series of decisions calculated more to cover their own asses and boost their interests in the Middle East than to solve the Jewish-Arab problem. The results generated a frustration that turned Jews and Arabs againste each other. Palestinian groups attacked Jews, and Jews organized defense forces and attacked Palestinians.

Since then there has been an escalating tit-for-tat of atrocities from both sides. The atrocities from the Israelis happen to be greater than the Palestinian atrocities mainly because Israel is a powerful nation backed by the United States, while Palestinians have no state, no army, and no real support from the Arab community. They are thus not as effective at applying their hate as Israelis.

Evil begets evil, and has in the Holy Land since before 1948. Good begets good, at least after an initial period of disbelief and distrust. And it's good for your soul. Ancient conflicts end in one of two ways: both sides decide they've had enough of the hate and distrust and reach out to each other; or one side completely wipes out the other side. Let's hope for the first possibility.

Hot

When the backyard thermometer hit 110 degrees, I decided it was time to decamp for the library, where there is air conditioning and free wireless. I was not alone. But it was peaceful, the silence broken only by the occasional cell phone tinkle and the grating symphonics of Windows starting up on numerous laptops.

I read a McClean's Magazine from cover to cover (a fascinating survey compared Canadians 30 years ago with today. In 1975 they were pretty stodgy and conservative, but now are way more open-minded than Americans. They value personal freedom above all else and that extends pointedly to other people's personal freedom. The most significant difference with Americans is that, though they are about as religious as us, they don't have any truck with fundamentalists. Or, I might add, the politicians who represent them.

Then I did some blogging and some blog-reading, with an occasional weather check. The official temperature went from 106 to 107 to 106 to 103. Then it was 6:00 and the library closed. I wandered over to the movie palace, but there was nothing I wanted to watch even with the promise of air conditioning. Then to the Apple Box, whose outdoor seats next to the river are the coolest place outside of an air-conditioned theater. But the Apple Box was closed, and all its outdoor tables were inside. Went to Jungle Vibes, where Wayne showed me the floor-to-ceiling fountain he is building along one wall. Not yet flowing, unfortunately.

Finally I went home, a short enough trip that I didn't quite suffer heat stroke in my non-air-conditioned car. At home I opened all the windows and turned on the fans, but what's the use? The air was just as hot outside as inside. I turned off the fans--waste of energy--and went out to the screened tent in the yard and tried to concentrate on my blogging while the cat registered her distress at not being able to get at me. (Sorry, this is a no-flea zone.)

A weather check revealed that the elusive weather-station on the Arctic fringes of town now showed a mere 87 degrees. By nightfall, it was down to 79. Time to go in and turn on the fans again. The air blowing from the fan now feels marginally refreshing because it is actually cooler than the air inside.

Steve went to Lake Berryessa, arguably the hot spot in our vicinity, but he drove his air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned house to do what he likes best: play music with friends. I could have gone but, no, I wanted to get some work done.

And it was work, trying to get away from the heat. Tomorrow, I'm going to San Francisco for some fog and ocean breezes.

Days like this were common in San Jose where I grew up. No one had air conditioning. The only recourse was to find a shady spot and spread-eagle yourself on the lawn. The only real relief came when the evening dew fell and the lawn was cool and damp. But the relief was short-lived; in those days they made kids go to bed even before it got dark, in hot bedrooms we had to share with a sibling. On hot restless nights I had to resort to sneaking out the window after my parents went to bed and taking long walks through the darkened neighborhoods.

But Petaluma cools down most evenings around 7 p.m. Nights like this are rare, and thank God.

And thank God for libraries. No, actually, thank the government for libraries. Wonderful as the private sector is, they haven't gotten around to building free lending libraries where anyone can go without a membership card. It doesn't fit their marketing plan.

Some Lebanese blogs--and a peace plan

About Lebanon: Scroll down to July 19 to see responses to Israeli comments.
UrShalim
Indiana Beth: An American student in Beirut
One too many peaches
Lebanese Bloggers

Here is a quote from the article by Rabbi Michael Lerner that I linked to this morning. It contains the elements of his Israeli peace plan. I think this is a balanced plan that addresses grievances of both Israelis and Palestinians in a spirit of reconciliation.

1. Permanent boundaries for both states that roughly resemble the pre-67 borders, with some border adjustments mutually agreed to along lines developed in the Geneva Accord (Israel incorporating some of the border settlements into Israel, in exchange for Israel giving equal amounts and quality of land to the Palestinian State).

2. Sharing of Jerusalem and its holy sites, with each side entitled to establish their national capital in Jerusalem, Israel to have control over the Jewish and Armenian quarters plus the Wall and adjacent territory, and Palestine to have control over the Temple Mount with its mosques.

3. All states participating in the International Conference would dedicate at least .1% of their GDP toward an international fund for reparations for Palestinians who lost property, employment or homes in the period 1947-1967, and to Jews who fled from Arab states in the same period (however, reparations will not be paid to any Arab or Jewish family with current gross assets of more than $5 million dollars).

4. A joint Israel/Palestine/International Community police force will be set up to enforce border security for both sides. The U.S. and Nato will enter into a mutual security pact for both parties guaranteeing that each side will be protected by the U.S. and Nato from any assault by the other or by any assault from any other country in the world.

5. Creation of an Atonement and Reconciliation Commission which will unveil all records of both sides, bring to light all violations of human rights on both sides, bring formal charges against those who do not confess their involvement in those violations and testify to the details, and supervise a newly created peace curriculum for all schools and universities aimed at teaching reconciliation and non-violence in action and communication. The explicit goal of this Commission will be to foster the conditions for a reconciliation of the heart and a new understanding on the part of both peoples that each side has been cruel and insensitive, and need to repent, and that both sides have a legitimate natrrative that needs to be understood and accepted as a legitimate viewpoint by the other side.

Response to Patches

Thanks for your comment on my 7/16 post. I did goof--I said the article was from the New York Times instead of the Washington Post. However, the link is correct--it's just that the headline got changed. Maybe someone at the Post was actually embarrassed by it.

Your comment about civilian deaths is an interesting one. The whole point of a guerrilla war is in fact to make it hard to find the fighters in an unequal conflict. If they met on the battlefield, the stronger power would win instantly. The success of the American revolution was partly due to the fact that Americans were able to shoot at redcoats from behind trees and then melt away to their homes.

I don't condone Hezbollah's capturing of Israeli soldiers or bombing Haifa. But it's important to recognize that Israel regularly rounds up young Palestinian men and detains them without charge for six months--allowed under Israeli law--before either charging them or letting them go. At any given time, thousands of Palestinians (including Hezbollah members) are in Israeli prisons, often without charge. So Israel has a far worse record of kidnapping the people they don't like.

Hezbollah has captured Israeli soldiers before in their effort to get these prisoners freed. Sharon himself negotiated with Hezbollah to exchange prisoners for captured Israelis, thus avoiding a bloodbath like the current one.

No matter how evil you think Hezbollah is, how can it be okay to kill hundreds of civilians to get rid of the bad guys? That's like blowing up a house where a murderer is holed up with his family or hostages. We just don't do that. (Well, okay, we did do it in Waco, but a lot of people felt we went too far.)

The problem is that Israel was founded on an injustice. Now, don't get me wrong--I do support the right of Israel to exist, even given the initial injustice. After centuries of persecution, the Jews deserve a nation of their own.

But when you don't address an injustice, it festers. The victims, unless they are Gandhi, retaliate in anger, usually furthering the injustice. Injustice by one side breeds injustice by the other. And since Israel is far more powerful than the stateless Palestinians, the injustice on the Israeli side is far greater. Throughout Israeli history, far more Palestinian civilians--including women and children--have died than Israelis. Remember, the latest trouble in Gaza started when an Israeli bomb killed a family that was picknicking on the beach.

Extracting a just solution from all this mess will be difficult. More bombing and killing will not work in the long run. For an interesting proposed peace plan from Rabbi Michael Lerner, check out this site. I think he has some good ideas. What do you think?

Response to Anonymous

Dear Anonymous. Thanks for your comment. I always feel so warm and toasty when actually posts a comment on my blog, thereby proving that someone does indeed read my posts. For the rest of my far-flung readership, here is the comment on my July 10 post ("Immigration: It's not as simple as you think") in its entirety.

I’ve read your article with interest and I disagree with your basic premise. I feel it is as simple as I think it is. There is legal and there is illegal. I have no problem with immigration but there are legal ways of coming here. I know the legal way is long, difficult and expensive. However, we are a nation of laws and there are ways of changing the laws if you feel a change is needed. To me it is not a matter of economics or unemployment numbers or available jobs or housing. It is simply against the law. The fact that your first act upon coming to this country is to break the law shows me your contempt for this country and it’s laws.

(Anonymous, you don't seriously think that people risk their lives in the desert to come here illegally out of contempt, do you?)

We do agree on one thing. It IS illegal. Now, what do you propose to do about it? Shall we build an iron curtain? Shall we throw all the illegal employers in jail?

Since it's illegal, I hope you plan to avoid eating in any restaurant where an illegal alien might be employed. (Be sure and check the kitchen.) Please don't buy any produce, because it's all picked by illegals. Don't get your roof replaced, because the roofers are all Latinos, and you can bet they're not all legal. You'll have to do a lot of research to find out if that frozen chicken you bought was packed by illegals.

Is your grandmother in a nursing home? Make sure there are no illegals changing her sheets or helping her get dressed. In fact, you’d better just take care of her yourself, since there are very few nursing homes that don’t employ illegals, and they're probably out of your reach financially.

I'm not trying to make fun of you. It would actually be almost impossible to avoid using the services of an illegal, unless you have the time and money to do a lot of research and pay premium prices for the resulting services.

Of course, we could actually enforce the law against HIRING illegals--not real likely, since the administration has reduced the number of people enforcing that particular law so that the number of illegal employers being prosecuted has dropped from several hundred a year to last year's total of four.

Besides, the business interests that find it economically convenient to hire illegals are the same ones that fund the campaigns of our politicians—including the president. It makes it very awkward when the people demand that the politicians do something that goes against the wishes of their best donors. What usually happens is a lot of self-righteous speech about the sanctity of citizenship and then--nothing.

Since the government seems unlikely to enforce the law against hiring illegals, let's talk solutions that we the people can achieve.

First, tell your representatives to stop giving taxpayer money to the agricultural industry. These are not mom-and-pop farmers that need a government handout. Thanks to NAFTA and our price supports, these mega-farmers can sell their produce to Mexico at a price so low that Mexican farmers go out of business and are forced to look elsewhere for a job, legal or otherwise, so they can feed their children.

Instead of buying shrink-wrapped produce from the supermarket, shop at your local sustainable organic farm. These farmers are less likely to hire illegals and they are a benefit to your community. Plus the food tastes better. Better yet, grow your own.

Here's best solution of all: Let's pay for our own politicians with “Clean Money” voluntary publicly funded election campaigns. Unfortunately, asking Congress to enact such a law is a little like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. But before you vote in the fall, you could insist that the candidates make a public statement in support of Clean Money campaign finance in order to get your vote. In California, we're working for Clean Money with Proposition 89.

I'd be interested in your comments, Anonymous. You simplified the problem; now can you simplify the solution?

"Morality" returns to Afghanistan

The Afghan government has alarmed human rights groups by approving a plan to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the body which the Taliban used to enforce its extreme religious doctrine.

The proposal, which came from the country's Ulema council of clerics, has been passed by the cabinet of President Hamid Karzai and will now go before the Afghan parliament.

A patriot's words

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." -- James Madison (Quoted by Paul Krugman)

What's wrong with this headline?

Airstrikes Hit Beirut; At Least 8 Die in Haifa
(Washington Post)

Did the airstrikes at Beirut cause 8 to die in Haifa? How many died in Beirut? Let's scroll down to see if we find out. Hmm. No mention. But toward the middle of the article we find that at least 92 Lebanese have been killed and 250 wounded, nearly all civilians, since the start of this war. No mention of Israeli totals, but the latest deaths in Haifa add up to a figure under 20.

How about those weapons from Iran? More proof that those evil Iranians should be wiped off the face of the earth. How dare they try to go nuclear. But wait--where did Israel's Patriot missiles come from? Well, that's different, isn't it?

Why is it just fine for Israel to have nuclear weapons--using technology provided by the U.S.--while it's bad, evil, for Iran to have them? I think it's a great idea to insist Iran abolish its nukes, but then I think it's a great idea for all countries to abolish them--including the U.S.

Meanwhile, we've turned Israel into our proxy for war in the Middle East and convinced our populace that the Israelis are innocent victims, not the perpretrators who touched this whole thing off when they bombed innocent families on a Gaza beach.

Update: AP Story

Police said 106 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Lebanon in the four-day Israeli offensive. On the Israeli side, at least 15 have been killed, four civilians and 11 soldiers.

Note that only 4 of those Israeli deaths were civilians. Who is the barbarian here?

Immigration: It's never as simple as you think

The Immigration Equation - New York Times

The article compares a conservative and liberal commentator on immigration. The conclusion of both is that immigration hurts low income Americans, while benefiting middle and upper income Americans. But along the way, the liberal commentator asks why immigration seems generally to have contributed to prosperity. Some extracts:

Is immigration still the engine of prosperity that the history textbooks describe? Or is it a boon to business that is destroying the livelihoods of the poorest workers — people already disadvantaged by such postmodern trends as globalization, the decline of unions and the computer?
...

The first gleaning from the Ivory Tower came as a surprise. All things being equal, more foreigners and indeed more people of any stripe do not mean either lower wages or higher unemployment. If they did, every time a baby was born, every time a newly minted graduate entered the work force, it would be bad news for the labor market. But it isn't. Those babies eat baby food; those graduates drive automobiles.

As Card [the liberal commentator] likes to say, "The demand curve also shifts out." It's jargon, but it's profound. New workers add to the supply of labor, but since they consume products and services, they add to the demand for it as well. "Just because Los Angeles is bigger than Bakersfield doesn't mean L.A. has more unemployed than Bakersfield," Card observes.

In theory, if you added 10 percent to the population — or even doubled it — nothing about the labor market would change. Of course, it would take a little while for the economy to adjust. People would have to invest money and start some new businesses to hire all those newcomers. The point is, they would do it. Somebody would realize that the immigrants needed to eat and would open a restaurant; someone else would think to build them housing. Pretty soon there would be new jobs available in kitchens and on construction sites. And that has been going on since the first boat docked at Ellis Island.

In other words, immigrants don't just take jobs; their presence creates jobs, just as native-born people do.

Are illegal immigrants a drain on public taxes?

With the exception of a few border states, however, the effect of immigration on public-sector budgets is small, and the notion that undocumented workers in particular abuse the system is a canard.Since many illegals pay into Social Security (using false ID numbers), they are actually subsidizing the U.S. Treasury. And fewer than 3 percent of immigrants of any stripe receive food stamps. Also, and contrary to popular wisdom, undocumented people do support local school districts, since, indirectly as renters or directly as homeowners, they pay property taxes. Since they tend to be poor, however, they contribute less than the average. One estimate is that immigrants raise state and local taxes for everyone else in the U.S. by a trivial amount in most states, but by as much as $1,100 per household per year in California. They are certainly a burden on hospitals and jails but, it should be noted, poor legal workers, including those who are native born, are also a burden on the health care system.

In other words, poor people are a greater tax burden than rich people, regardless of where they come from. However, another study finds, among other things, that immigrant children from the same socioeconomic level as nativeborn children complete more years of education and become less of a tax burden than their native-born peers (I had to copy and paste the story in its entirety because the NY Times, in its infinite wisdom, decided you had to pay $3.75 for the link to the story):

Immigration Math: It's a Long Story

By DANIEL ALTMAN
New York Times
Published: June 18, 2006

MUCH of today's debate about immigration revolves around the same old questions: How much do immigrants contribute to production? Do they take jobs away from people born in the United States? And what kinds of social services do they use? Yet every immigrant represents much more than just one worker or one potential citizen. To understand fully how immigration will shape the economy, you can't just look at one generation — you have to look into the future.

Sociologists and economists are just beginning to study the performance of second- and third-generation members of immigrant families. Because of the variety of experiences of people from different countries and cultures, it's not easy to generalize. But recent research has already uncovered some pertinent facts.

Education is a good place to start, because it's strongly correlated with future earnings. Children of immigrants complete more years of education than their native-born counterparts of similar socioeconomic backgrounds. "You can expect a child of immigrants whose parents have 10 years of education to do a lot better than a child of natives whose parents have 10 years of education," said David Card, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Being a child of immigrants, he said, "sort of boosts your drive."

As a whole, though, the second generation also tends to move toward the American average, Professor Card said. Some graduate from high school even though their parents didn't, but some whose parents have doctorates will earn only bachelor's degrees.

Still, it can take several generations for poor immigrant families to catch up to American norms. "For the largest immigrant group — that is Mexicans and Mexican-Americans — the picture is progress, but still lagging behind other Americans," said Hans P. Johnson, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. "They're doing much better than their parents, graduating from high school, but they still have very low graduation rates from college."

But despite the lag in education, Mr. Johnson said, Mexican immigrants and their families don't have much trouble finding jobs. "One of the paradoxes of Mexican immigration is that you have these workers with low skills but incredibly high employment rates," he said. "The second generation isn't able to maintain employment levels that are quite so high, but they're basically in the same ballpark."

Second generations of immigrant families are managing to climb the skills ladder, too. A recent survey by the Census Bureau reveals that 40 percent of the female workers and 37 percent of the male workers in the second generation took professional or management positions, up from 30 and 24 percent, respectively, in the first generation. The survey, taken in 2004, included many adults whose parents came to the United States decades ago, noted William H. Frey, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who compiled data from the survey. With more recent immigrants, he said, it's possible that lower education rates may eventually lead to worse outcomes.

Other factors could also make success more difficult for today's children of immigrants, compared with those of the past.

One is increased competition. The children of Italians and Poles who came to the United States around the turn of the 20th century didn't face much of it, because the government imposed quotas on immigration after their parents arrived, said Roger Waldinger, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. By contrast, the children of recent arrivals face competition from successive waves of immigrants from numerous regions.

Inequality of income and wealth is another factor that could affect opportunities. "The second generation of Italians and Poles came of age in an era of historically low inequality," Professor Waldinger said. "The second generation of Mexican immigrants is coming of age in an era of historically high inequality, and that has to work to the disadvantage of those with low levels of schooling."

But there are also forces working in the opposite direction. For one thing, the children of today's immigrants will have much better access to education and the labor market than those of a century ago. "It almost certainly will be the case that tomorrow's third generation will have better outcomes than today's third generation," Mr. Johnson said. "The conditions today are better in terms of educational opportunities."

Adding to that, members of several immigrant groups have often risen quickly to — or even started at — the top of the wage scale. Professor Waldinger said that "the median for Indian immigrants is 16 years of schooling" and that, on balance, "the Indians, the Koreans, the Chinese — they're already successful." One reason, he added, is that society is "much more open to outsiders" in top jobs and at elite colleges than it ever was before.

EVEN if successive generations of immigrants manage to become as economically successful as native-born Americans, a big question will remain: How many people do we really want in the United States? From the standpoint of government fiscal policy, Professor Card said, you could argue that the only immigrants you'd want in the United States were those "whose children are going to get Ph.D.'s" and would therefore be economically productive.

Some people might argue that a larger population raises housing prices and causes more pollution, he said. But there can be advantages to size, too. "If you have population growth, you can finance intergenerational transfer systems" like Social Security and Medicare, he said. And lest we forget, he said, "big countries have more power."

Mr. Frey agreed that waves of immigration could help to solidify a country's position in the world. In that respect, he said, Europe and Japan have a problem. "They have a very aging society because they don't like immigrants," he said. "They're going to end up on the back burner of the global economy."

I hate politics--and other complaints

Politics is such a bore. A real yawn. And here I am blogging when I should be keeping my political commitments. In less than 4 months Californians will vote on Clean Money (Proposition 89), the last best hope for American democracy. Moneyed interests will be going on the attack full-tilt, with lies and distortions ("Do you want your tax dollars going to politicians?") and wads and wads of cash, to ensure that our tax dollars continue going, instead, to those same moneyed interests.

Tomorrow and Tuesday I'm polling for my local civic group, to get an idea of what voters want for Petaluma, so our group can act on their wishes. Wednesday I'll be warming a seat at the local pub in a pre-announced attempt to lure members of our group to get together and actually talk to one another.

What I really want is to get out of town. Head for the Sierras, that clean austere place of granite and transparent lakes. Where the air is thin and pure and every step, every breath, is pure spirit.

It's not easy to walk 10 miles on granite. At some point I'll be too old to do it. Already my knees are giving out. Will I get there before it's too late?

Right here in my town there are roads not taken, canyons and hilltops not explored.

There is my garden. My back yard in need of rototilling--though I have made some progress there. More than half of the area visible in the May 31 photo has been tilled.

My daughter showed up for 5 days. She spent most of it in my car house-hunting in Berkeley, leaving me stranded without the benefit of internal combustion. I chose to spend one of those days replacing the plumbing in my kitchen; as I worked I made a list of missing parts I needed with a view to getting them later in the afternoon.

It was 4:45 when I remembered that I had no car, and due to a catastrophic fire at our local neighborhood hardware store, the only place within biking distance closed at 5. So we spent a day piling up dirty dishes. Another day passed while I figured out the ins and outs of installing faucets and garbage disposals and drainpipes. Then it was time to take my daughter to the airport.

Flag-burning reflux

This is an issue that comes up whenever the Republicans need to secure the base. That's all it means. During the first flag-burning frenzy in the late 80's, my eldest son--an Eagle Scout!--used to ask, "Mom, what's the big deal? Every year on the 4th of July, we burn flags at Scout Camp."

Of course, those were old, worn-out flags. I'm sure the flag-burning amendment isn't meant to apply to those. But how will it distinguish? Who will decide what constitutes respectful flag burning as opposed to "desecration"? Law enforcement? The courts? Homeland Security? Congress? Maybe Alberto Gonzalez will decide. Or the next president's (Hillary's?) attorney general.