Tag: Laura

Categories
General

A Real Christmas Gift


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President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other congressional leaders among the Democrats hailed the passage of the Senate health “reform” bill as a Christmas gift to the American people. That’s about the equivalent of trying to convince the chief income earner(s) in a home that the real gift of Christmas for them is the increased balance on the credit card (or the reduced balance of their checking and/or saving’s accounts) rather than the presents they got.

In response to the news that the bill had finally passed my wife had a great idea for a real gift that the Senate could give us for Christmas some year (besides repealing that bill). If they have the authority to mandate that we buy insurance that opens up a world of possibilities. First and foremost her suggestion is that they should mandate that everyone in America should get an answering machine. Just imagine and end to:

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

Ring . . .

The person you are calling is not available. *click*

I’m quite confident that universal telephone answering machines would have a positive impact on interstate commerce.

Categories
culture National

Establish Criteria, Not Quotas


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My wife was politically low-key when I first met her. I have enjoyed the fact that she has started to become more interested in political issues and principles of good government. This morning at breakfast, without any warning, she asked me about my thoughts on the issue of immigration. The conversation that followed led to some interesting insights (and must have been incomprehensible to our children).

First, as I have stated before, we need to make an informed decision on where we stand on the issue of immigration. Knee-jerk reactions (whether it’s “close the border” or “grant some legal status”) don’t fix the fundamental problem that we have created immigration laws that we are unwilling or unable to enforce.

One of the things that came out of the conversation was the idea that quotas are an arbitrary, and hence therefore poor, method for determining who can legally enter the country. In fact, quotas are a bad way to make any public policy. No matter where you set the numbers they are essentially arbitrary. There is no reason why person X+1 has greater potential to burden the nation than person X.

If we think that we should not have completely open borders then we should set criteria for who is allowed to come and then allow all people who meet the criteria to enter. Prior to 1924 when we started using quotas the criteria were essentially that we allowed anyone without major criminal backgrounds or communicable diseases to enter the country. I think those are good criteria to keep and there is no reason that we cannot develop other criteria to keep immigration at sustainable levels and make sure that we are getting the people that we want. For example, if we are looking for people to do menial jobs for us then we should allow people in who have arranged to take those jobs. If we only want people who will work to become citizens then we set criteria that they must achieve citizenship within a set amount of time or be deported.

I’m not saying what criteria we should use – I think that’s a national debate that we need to undertake – but I am saying that the land of the free should not be free only to the first 10000 people in line each year.

Categories
National

Hillary Clinton: Babysitter in Chief


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Here is another gem from Laura. She came in to my office this afternoon and told me that she had just seen a bit of a speech by Senator Clinton. She thought it very important that I be aware that Hillary Clinton had just told her audience that they wanted a President who would solve their problems, take care of their families and watch out for their children. (I don’t claim that to be verbatim.)

Of course my first thought is that I would prefer a president who would enforce the laws of the land, defend the Constitution, and tell the truth to the American people. I don’t need someone to keep pushing the lies that there are painless, if complex, solutions to the problems we have been busy creating for ourselves.

Upon reflection I realized that maybe Senator Clinton is really making a good offer – free babysitting of my kids. I’ll bet she’s a lot more dependable than many a teenage babysitter. Of course by the time I finished writing this I realized that she never said she would babysit for free – or even for cheap.