Are There Jobs Americans Won't Do?

One of the arguments for immigration reform (read: blanket amnesty)--the surface argument that masks the real reason, which is to farm Democratic votes--is that there are simply too many jobs that Americans "won't do."

However, a study by the Center for Immigration Studies used 2005-07 data to look at 465 occupations. Only four had a majority of immigrants in them: plasterers and stucco masons, agricultural graders and sorters, personal appliance workers, and tailors and dressmakers.

In every other occupation, such as janitors, maids, and groundskeepers, a large majority were filled by native-born Americans. The report's conclusion: "The often-made argument that immigrants only take jobs Americans don't want is simply wrong."

So, there you go, Dubya--who once said there are simply jobs "Americans won't do"--has been proven wrong again.

SGR a Bargaining Chip for AMA Support

The charade of balancing the Medicare budget known as SGR, sustainable growth rate, is on the bargaining table to gain support from the American Medical Association for the Senate's health care reform measure.

The offer was made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D.-Nev., but ignored by AMA President James Rohack, M.D.

SGR is an automatic payment deflator that supposedly adjusts Medicare reimbursement downward each year to eventually reach a balanced budget. Problem is, the AMA has been successful every year since its adoption in getting the Senate to vote away the SGR decreases.

When the House of Representatives health reform measure passed, a provision in the bill killed SGR. However, the Senate Finance Committee measure includes no SGR eliminator.

In a related move, however, Senator Debbie Stabenow, D.-Mich., has introduced a measure totally separate from health care reform to end SGR. The measure has to be separate because it ends all illusion of ever balancing Medicare's budget and thus throws health care reform into the reality of red ink, which is where it's always been except for vast budgetary and legislative tricks that push costs down the road but implement new taxes and other "revenue enhancers" up front.

What this all boils down to is what no Democrat will ever admit: The health care crisis in America, which they blame on private insurers, is at root a Medicare problem that, arising from the root, has now poisoned the trunk, branches and leaves of the entire health care tree.

Health care reform (which just mandates that everyone purchase health insurance to increase the money pool to cover Medicare losses) is thus in reality a Medicare band-aid. It is certainly not going to result anytime soon in anything approaching universal coverage at affordable prices. In fact, as the insurance companies are warning, it's going to result in more expensive health insurance that has to be purchased by more people who can't afford it and may not even want it.

Not to worry, just as they will jettison SGR to placate physicians into supporting health care reform (which isn't really reform, etc.), the Democrats will try to placate the newly mandated health insurance consumers with tax breaks and subsidies.

In other words, infinitely more red ink so the Democrats won't ever have to confront the reality that their beloved Medicare is bankrupt and unsustainable.

Change you can believe in.

But not me.

Unlike Her Cohort, Susan Collins Makes Sense

Maine's other Republican Senator, Susan Collins, reacted swiftly to the pro-health reform vote of Olympia Snowe, who calls herself a Republican but says her party has changed for the worse.

Seeing through the Senate Finance Committee reform plan, Senator Collins said the bill not only does not lower costs but actually raises them:

The goal of health care reform must be to rein in costs and provide consumers with more affordable choices. Yet, many individuals and families would be forced to pay more for their health care under the Finance Committee bill, and they would have fewer choices. Our health care reform efforts should give Americans more, not fewer, choices of affordable coverage options.

She also lamented the gutting of Medicare for senior citizens.

It would be laughable if not palpably tragic to listen to Barack Obama and his Demo-cronies hail health reform as "deficit-neutral" and lowering costs for Americans.

Instead of my going on and on, however, read Senator Collins' perceptive comments here.

Must See in Germany: The OSH Museum

OSH stands for Occupational Safety and Health, and it's the name of both a Nixon-era law--the OSH Act--and an ongoing federal agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). It's also the name of a museum in Dortmund, Germany.

I have no first-hand knowledge of the Occupational Safety and Health Museum, but since OSHA in the U.S. deals with a lot of workplace injuries and fatalities, I can imagine all kinds of grotesqueries in the museum, but that's evidently not the case. Here's a description for the site travelblog.viator.com:

Amongst the many, many things on offer are playful robotic arms, interactive games that mess with your visual perception, aircraft cockpits to sit in and mock-ups of a power station’s control room.

All manner of machinery is on display, from weaving looms and printing presses to helicopters used to repair power lines. There are lots of buttons to press, computers to play with and enormous contraptions to control. All information is in German, so you might not understand what’s going on most of the time if you don’t speak the language, but the sheer scale and ambition of the exhibition make it worth visiting.

Unfortunately, the site offered no pictures of the place.

Predatory Cell Phones Target of New Law

As I've mused before, why don't they just implant us all with mind-reading GPS devices at birth? They, of course, are our brilliant legislators in Washington, D.C., Sacramento (fill in your state's capital), and in every City Hall nationwide.

Now comes this gem out of a Republican Congressman from New York. His Camera Phone Predator Act (he wasn't watching his abbreviations here--this works out to CPPA and CREEP would be better) would require cell phones with cameras to make a loud noise every time a photo is snapped. This, he reasons, would alert women that they were being photographed up skirt, as it is called.

Presumably, another law covers the taking of illicit photographs of people's privates, but CPPA would make it a crime to disable or silence the camera tone.

Brilliant, isn't it? Barf....

Baucus Bill Saves Money by Spending It--Right!

Only in the nation's capital could this equation work: You save money by spending more of it.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has come out with an estimate that the Max Baucus Senate Finance Committee health reform measure will cost taxpayers $829 billion over ten years. Okay, the CBO is probably off by a full measure, and the subsidies and other costs in the measure will probably come in closer to $2 trillion in a decade.

But that's not the real problem with this equation. This is: In 2019, the CBO says the Baucus bill will start saving $81 billion a year. From what and how? Even if that's true, it would still take more than a decade to pay back the original 10-year outlay with no interest or accommodation for inflation.

Only in D.C. could such voodoo arithmetic be acceptable. After all, they're not spending their own money. They're just printing it and asking others to foot the bill through Treasury bonds. Or inflation. Or economic devastation.

Can I print my own money and issue bonds? I could live like a king (or Congressman) too if all of us were allowed to play by the same rules as those in power.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Obamacized

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona (think Phoenix), has denounced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for rescinding his 287(g) privileges, which allowed him to round up illegal immigrants for deportation proceedings. He now says he'll continue his raids under state law and drive the illegals to the border himself if he has to.

After Arpaio called officials at DHS "liars," Homeland Security spokesmen declined to comment, saying they are still reviewing their agreement with the sheriff’s department and the other 65 agencies that participated in the 287(g) program that allows local and state officers to make immigration arrests.

I'd call it being Obamacized as the new administration hopes to round up illegal immigrants into voting-rights citizens to produce what they hope will be an insurmountable Democratic super-majority for all time. The sheriff is just one more hostage along the way.