Well considering how much political commentary there is on immigration reform I thought I’d add my two cents.

First of all it is my belief that no matter what we do, the #1 important thing that must happen as a result of this is enforcement of the new laws.  Unless laws are complied with, laws are meaningless.  Laws are only complied with when the combination of the risk of getting caught and the penalty for being caught encourages most people to comply with the law.  In the case of immigration, with so many of those seeking to live in the US having very little to lose, there isn’t a strong enough penalty you can give that would deter illegal immigration on it’s own (or said differently with a low risk of being caught).  As a result, the only way to ensure compliance with the law to make the likelihood of being caught very high.

So whatever we do, enforcement of the new law MUST be our top priority.  If it isn’t, whatever our plan is will be meaningless.

Beyond that, my feelings are driven by two factors: respecting the lives of those who want to immigrate legally and relative stability of the US economy.

First, let me state what I think the biggest overlooked aspect of this debate is: employers abusing illegal immigrants.  When the debate is talked about, most speak as if the companies employing illegal immigrants and the immigrants who are illegally employed are perfectly happy with one another and would be content to just see the government leave them alone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The reality is that although the alternative back home may be worse, most illegal immigrants face a world where they are routinely abused by not being paid for their work (in addition to the low wages to begin with), working in unsafe conditions, and rampant racism.

Why does this occur?  Because the illegal immigrants have no recourse.  They can’t go to law enforcement because they’re illegal.  And that’s the crux of the matter.  Many argue that by letting illegal immigrants into the country we are being humane to them.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  By letting them in illegally we are creating an environment where we are allowing them to be abused and we can turn our back in ignorance.  That is morally unacceptable to me.  We must ensure that our borders are enforced not only for “America’s” sake but to ensure the fair treatment of all who live in this country.

Next, I’ll attack another overlooked aspect: subverting minimum wage.  When politicians talk about a “guest worker program” what they’re talking about is a way for US employers to pay below minimum wage to immigrants.  Why should they be able to do that?  What makes these individuals less deserving of minimum wage than the rest of us?  I think that the “guest worker programs” as currently proposed are barbaric and de-humanizing.

I’m perfectly fine with allowing vast numbers of immigrants into our country.  However, that does not give us the right to treat them in sub-human fashion.  If they’re allowed to live here then they deserve the rights that everyone who lives here has.

Finally, what should we do with the illegal immigrants who currently live in the US?  This is the most difficult problem to address particularly considering that the US’s lack of enforcement in the past has been a de facto endorsement of their arrival.  Additionally, I heavily believe in the principle of forgiveness.

So where does that leave us?  It leaves us where the right solution is to do the following:

1. Dramatically step up enforcement on the border
2. Create a temporary residency program that has a path to permanent residency and citizenship for all immigrants and gives those immigrants the full set of rights of current legal immigrants, including minimum wage.
3. Allow those who are already living in the country to join the above program with some credit based on the length of their stay although never so much that they immediately become permanent residents.  Despite the fact that they deserve forgiveness, there must be some requirement that they go through a immigration process.  Residents who have arrived in the last year(?) would have to apply similar to non-residents and would not get any time based credit.
4. Set target number for these programs that are realistic and are “front loaded” to accept the reality that millions are already living here and will be joining the program “mid-stream”

Now, is that so hard?

OK, so there’s this article in the Sacramento Bee about Don Peralta pulling his support for the Pre-School Initiative to be on the next state-wide ballot.

I don’t want to comment on the Initiative because I don’t know anything about it so I don’t know if I’m for or against it.

What I do what to comment on the continual misuse of statistics by various proponents. At the end of the article a proposition supporter is quoted as saying:

“half of all 4th graders can’t read at grade level”

That’s like of like saying “Did you know half of all people are shorter than the other half!?!” Grade level is determined by the average performance of kids in that grade. Since no one performs (well MAYBE one person) at EXACTLY grade level, half score above, half score below. It’s just a fact of life no matter how smart or how stupid kids are nor how much pre-school they attended. 100 years from now, when kids in the 4th grade are doing Calculus because of our advances in teaching techniques, half of them will STILL be performing below grade level. Similarly, if in 100 years we’ve completely given up on pushing our children to learn and we’re teaching them how to walk in the 4th grade, half of the class, that incredible group that can not only take a few steps but walk across the whole room, will STILL be performing above grade level.

What a joke.

I was reading this heavily biased story when a thought of mine re-occured to me. The statement that did it was:

“It’s (a new ballot initiative to pay for pre-school for all children) also about taxes, as it would raise the state income tax rate on the richest 1 percent of Californians – married couples earning over $800,000 or individuals over $400,000.”

I fundamentally disagree with this type of taxation particularly when put in a ballot initiative. The basic premise of these types of techniques is “we want this type of benefit… but we don’t want to have to pay for it.”

Listen, I’m OK with a graduated tax (where lower income is taxed at lower levels), but whenever we’re going to increase taxes, EVERYONE’S taxes need to be increased. They don’t need to be increased the same amount, we could choose to increase rich people taxes more than poor peoples, but if a new initiative needs taxation, then we’d all better be willing to contribute at least something. To at least be willing to make SOME kind of sacrifice, even if it is pale in comparison to what another group will be making.

Even if it is $50 a year for the “average family” as opposed to $100K for the millionare at least then we all have to make a trade off; to say to ourselves “is this really worth spending money on?”

Otherwise there will be no limit to our ability to spend money wastefully because it will be “free money”. I’ve already heard people basically admit it with statements like “Hey, if it only affects the millionares, why wouldn’t we do it?”

Why? Because it isn’t fair no matter much money the millionares have. We’re all citizens and we all need to contribute.

OK, I know that my blog traffic is minimal at best so creating two blogs doesn’t seem like a great idea on the surface. However, I’m thinking that I write about two VERY different topics. I write about my Catholic faith and the way I see the world as a result of that faith and I write about Cal football. Should I be splitting this into two separate blogs?

The reason this comes to mind is that although most of my posting to date has been Cal related, I’ve been thinking of upping my level of Catholic blogging. I want to write more reflections on the scripture of the day again. I don’t want this to put off those who come to my blog for Cal info.

So here’s a quick survey for all of my readers:

1. Would you visit my blog more often it it was more focused on the subject you’re interested in?
2. Do you think there would be some who wouldn’t visit if the two subjects continued to be intermixed?
3. For those who would be or might be interested in both sides, would having two blogs be a big inconvenience, or do you use an RSS reader?

Thank you to all who take the time to answer…

As I promised about a month ago, I’m going to endorse one side or the other of all of the propositions. I’ll be giving those endorsements and the reasons for them in 8 sequential posts today.

But before I get to the actual endorsements I want to make sure everyone is aware of my philosophy on propositions. I believe that for the majority of cases, laws should be written by the legislature. After all, that is their job. Propositions, to me, are kind of like a single issue recall of the entire legislature. The right to recall elected officials is an important right, but one that should not be taken lightly or used frivilously. Since I view propositions as a type of recall, I’ll only vote for a measure if the issue has been seriously mistreated by the legislature and deserves the weight of a single issue recall. Said differently: when in doubt, I vote no on all propositions.

With that in mind, read the below posts (and remember to vote next Tuesday!):

Anyone who knows me knows that I am an opponent of abortion “rights”. This measure is being attacked along those lines: you’re either for abortion “rights” or your not, pick a side and vote on this issue. But abortion is not completely a black and white issue. I’m fully willing to allow abortions for life-threatening reasons. In 99% of all cases where the mother dies during a pregnancy, the baby dies too (not that this was hard to figure out). Allowing a mother to kill a baby who is going to die anyway to save their own life is reasonable enough.

Similarly on the other side of the equation, even if one stands for abortion “rights”, one has to accept that it is a serious decision and not one that should be taken lightly. Children have a tendancy to do that, take too lightly serious decisions. The reality is that a 16 year old can’t get a flu shot without their parents CONSENT. All prop. 73 is asking is that abortion clinics NOTIFY the parents (i.e. the parents can’t even stop the child from going through with it because they don’t need to give consent). The main excuse thrown out there is that there are children who have abusive parents, who couldn’t tell their parents without risking further abuse. In my opinion, this is a stupid argument for a number of reasons:

1. There is a provision in the law to allow children to get a judicial bypass.
2. Despite arguments against reason #1 about it being a too complicated process for the child to get a judicial bypass, I guarantee you that clinics like planned parenthood will help children through the process (to the point of abusing it by knowing the judges who will grant the bypass even when it shouldn’t be).
3. The child doesn’t have to notify the parents, the clinic does that. This allows the child to have physical separation if needed.
4. This state has some of the most comprehensive child abuse laws in the world. If a parent is abusing a child, these laws already exist to protect them.
5. This is a corner case affecting a VERY small percentage of children.

The reality is that most children who don’t want to talk to their parents, don’t want to talk to them because they don’t want to face the music regarding the choices in their lives. We shouldn’t give children that choice. Parents should be involved in these decisions. Notifying parents so that they can talk to their children (and remember that is all this proposition does, it does NOT require parental consent) about this choice, is the right thing to do.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 73

Proposition 74 is simple enough. It changes tenure from 2 years to 5 years of employment. It also makes it easier for school districts to fire teachers after they have been tenured. Being no fan of tenure, my heart is sympathetic to this measure. That said, the more and more I think about this measure, the more and more I think that this measure falls short and is somewhat misdirected at what needs to be done. Tenure needs to be removed in public education (K-12). It doesn’t have a place there. If it were to remain, it needs to be changed to where it is granted to exceptional teachers after a number of years of service, instead of automatically envoked after a set number of years. That’s the way it is in colleges. A professor doesn’t just get tenure after a few years of work. No, the professor has to be recommended to the tenure committee and the committee must approve the tenure. (Along these lines, there was a teacher that was fired recently, not because she wasn’t acceptably good, but because it had now been two years and if she wasn’t fired, she would have been tenured and near impossible to let go if her acceptable performance deteriorated.)

With these thoughts in mind, I’ve decided I’m against prop. 74. If this measure passes, the state’s attention will turn elsewhere and real reform in teacher employment will not be examined. I’ll wait for a proposition that actually does something meaningful.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 74

This proposition is one of two propositions that I consider to be critical and not only worthy of a single issue recall, but nearly critical that it passes. Let’s be honest, the entire government of California from top to bottom is controlled by special interests. Our elected officials can not become elected officials unless they submit to the special interests and accept their donations (that implicitely require voting in certain ways down the road). Even our proposition process is overrun with special interest money. Want proof: what’s the number one campaign in terms of revenue spent in this special election? If you guessed the “No on 75 campaign”, you’re right!

This must stop! and prop 75 will slow it down by making sure that union members actually support the campaigning of their unions. Public employee unions are by far the biggest special interests in this state with the most to lose from reform. Don’t buy their ads about how they’re all noble and good. They’re not. They’re a union. Teachers unions aren’t in business to make sure that kids get a good education. They’re in business to make sure that teachers get paid well. The same is true of nurses unions, they aren’t in business to protect patients but make sure nurses are paid well. Don’t get me wrong, I think nurses and teachers should get a good salary with good benefits. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that the unions crap about being solely well intentioned ‘only for the good of California’ organizations is 100% pure bullshit. There job is to protect their union members whether or not (the key point) it is in the best interest of California.

Furthermore, these unions have gone beyond their charter (protecting their union members) to do a great deal of political campaigning not directly related to their union members employment. It has angered Wendy and I to no end to see the CTA spending her money on campaigns for issues and candidates we deplore. Could we opt out of giving them that money? Yes, but it is fairly complicated AND (more importantly) requires that she quit the union and lose out on all the other benefits outside of collective bargaining (like life ensurance availability) that the union provides as well as being ostrocized for not being a member of the union. It’s not as simple as the unions will have you believe.

The unions argue that their members support them. If that’s true, they have nothing to worry about. If that’s the case, everyone will sign up for having the political campaign donations taken out of their paycheck and all that will be lost is a little bit of administrative time and money. But everyone knows that is NOT what is going to happen. No, what is going to happen is that large percentages of members will opt out and that percentage will only increase as the union asks for more and more money to campaign with. Unions will turn back into unions: entities that do collecive bargaining instead of political action committeee funded by public employees.

The number one complaint I hear about this bill is that it doesn’t affect corporations, only unions. That’s a good complaint. We need to reign them in too. However, unlike prop. 74 where it’s passing will take focus off the subject, prop. 75 passing will only ramp up the desire to see a another proposition (heck we may even see it out of the legislature) that will similarly reign in corporate spending. Prop. 75 can only help in this regard because if it fails, the effort to reign in big business will die too.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 75

Returning to my philosophy that propositions should only be used when absolutely necessary, I just don’t see this prop as being that important. The reality is that the legislature makes the budget every year and the governor approves it. These people SHOULD be able to do one of their most important jobs. Additionaly, I’m totally against having arbitrary metrics of how much spending will get spend on certain programs. Furthermore, I don’t see a need to do midyear spending corrections if we’ve made a good budget and are willing to make corrections the following year.

Sadly, our legislature has let us down. They’ve continued to outspend their revenue as well as playing all kinds of games to get around the spending limits we’ve put in place in the past. Because of this, I sympathize with those who support this bill. We DO need to get our budget situation under control. That said, the right solution to this problem is to elect new legislators. If we put the right people in office, they’ll solve the problem.

Since there is already a “proper” solution to our budgetary problems, there is no reason to make the water any muddier in our budget laws by passing this proposition.

My endorsement: NO on prop. 76

OK, this is by far the most important proposition to come to the voters in a long time if not in the history of the proposition process. This prop is very much at the core of why the proposition process exists. We have a legislature that has jury rigged the system to ensure that they get re-elected. As I heard one commentator say, the legislators pick us, not the other way around. This results in a situation where it is nearly impossible for us to elect new legislators who will fix this problem. The only way it can be fixed is to bypass the legislators and do it ourselves.

We need an impartial committee to draw district borders. Having the legislature do it is the stupidest idea we ever had. The opposition argues that retired judges are no better. I think that is complete BS. Are retired judges completely impartial? No, they aren’t. But they also don’t have any personal interest in the matter either. They’re retired, so they aren’t going to be running for election. They can’t accept any political donations, so they can’t get rich drawing biased borders. And if that isn’t good enough for you, there is a selection process that uses selections from both sides of the isle to put in a lottery system, so it will be very difficult for anyone to influence who the judges are that do the districting. And if THAT isn’t enough, the 3 judge panel has to unanimously vote to accept the borders, which will prevent any 2 judges from using their majority in the proceedings to strong arm the third.

Finally, and this is one of the most overlooked parts of the issue, after the judges draw up the districts, the new districts have to be voted on by us, just like we vote for the propositions. So if the borders are screwed up by the judges, we have a chance to reject them and start the process over with new judges using the lottery process.

With all of these built in protections, how can anyone say that prop. 77 wouldn’t be an improvement?

Everyone agrees that the current district situation is a mess. The opposition claims that this is a flawed attempt. Putting aside for a minute that there real motivation is to keep the status quo (and that’s the TRUTH behind their complaints), what is their alternative that they’re proposing? “Let a bi-partisan committee of legislators do it.” THAT’S HOW WE GOT HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE YOU BOZOS!!!! What happened when we had the legislature do it was that BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats agreed to carve up the state so that the Dems would get heavily democratic leaning districts and the Republicans would get the opposite. Both sides were happy because they protected their own elected seats. Bipartisanship does not help you with redistricting, it’s that simple, because both sides have a motivation to make deals in this fashion to protect themselves.

Need further proof that this isn’t just a Republican power play attempt to get more seats in the legislature? How about this: Many prominent Republicans are against this measure including all the ones who’s district I’m in. I’ve gotten letter after letter telling me to vote against 77 with all kinds of bogus reasons.

Sorry guys, I’m doing the right thing.

My endorsement: YES on prop. 77