Category Archives: Immigration

Boy Scout Training: “Put him on his face and put a knee in his back”

Crime and Punishment, Education, Immigration, The Surveillance State, The War on Drugs, War on Terror

Boy Scouts
From the “Not The Onion” files comes a tale that I can’t even believe, much less figure out how to respond to. Is this really what the Boy Scouts are becoming?

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence – an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked “the discipline of the program,” which was something he said his life was lacking. “I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed,” he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns – known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets (or bb pellets) – in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range. This is why a AirsoftPal’s guns guide has been provided in the training stage to ensure that all health and safety precautions have been made. There are places to get Airsoft Parts for those who are interested in taking up the sport.

Airsoft also gives them the ability to practice with different types of weaponry, which is vital for their training. This includes things like an airsoft sniper that focuses more on precision and distanced shooting rather than at close range, and this is what makes it the perfect training exercise.

“I like shooting them,” Cathy said. “I like the sound they make. It gets me excited.”

There is so much wrong here that I don’t know where to start. Maybe putting a 15-year-old into a bulletproof vest and running him through a course where his goal is to take down “active shooters” is one problem, since — you know — that’s such a HUGE part of the average cop’s day, would be a problem. Radley Balko, in his excellent work over at The Agitator, regularly points out the problematic aspects of training our police to be excitedly enacting para-military fantasies. There’s a fundamental difference between “to protect and serve” and seeing every person on the street as a potential “active shooter”.

When I was a kid, “troop leader” didn’t involve fatigues and a bulletproof vest.

But hey, this is the Boy Scouts, so it’s still a family-friendly environment:

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids.

So don’t worry, fellas… You can avoid the humdrum days spent in your cubicle as a CPA or marketing nitwit by living vicariously through your kids, as they storm terrorist strongholds in Omaha, stem the illegal alien tide in California, or make the world safe from marijuana. Folks like Kathryn Johnston and Angel Raich are evil and must be stopped, and you need to bring train the next generation to bring the necessary firepower to handle them.

Hat Tip: Radley Balko

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Reforming America’s Prison System: The Time Has Come

Activism, Constitution, Crime and Punishment, Criminal Justice Reform, Culture, Democrats, Economics, Freedom, General, Government Waste, History, Human Rights, Immigration, Individual Rights, Legal, Liberty, Mandatory Minimum Sentences, Political Correctness, Politics, Privacy, Property Rights, Strategies For Advancing Liberty, The Nanny State, The Surveillance State, The War on Drugs, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) in his recent article calling for a major reform of America’s prisons in Parade Magazine brought some very disturbing, eye opening, statistics about America’s prison system to light. In summary this is some of what he found:

-Since 1984, America’s prison population has quadrupled from 580,000 to 2.3 million

-Though the U.S. accounts for 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25% of the world’s reported prisoners

-Local, state, and federal spending on corrections costs the U.S. taxpayer about $68 billion annually* (California spent nearly $10 million on corrections last year by itself!)

-16% (350,000) adults in prison or jail are mentally ill

-3/4 of drug offenders in state prisons are non-violent offenders or in prison solely for drug offenses

-47.5% of all drug arrests in the U.S. were fore marijuana offenses

-Despite insignificant statistical differences regarding drug use among races, Blacks (accounting for 12% of the U.S. population) account for 37% of all drug arrests, 59% of which are convicted and account for 74% of all drug offenders sentenced to prison

Perhaps for the “tough on crime” types, this is all good news but for anyone else who thinks critically of these statistics, I would expect that most would be concerned if not horrified. In response to these statistics, Sen. Webb makes the following observation:

“With so many of our citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: Either we are home to the most evil people on earth or we are doing something different–and vastly counterproductive.”

For regular consumers of the evening news, it may seem that the first possibility could be true. Without fail, the evening news reports stories of violence, vandalism, kidnapping, rape, child molestation, and murder both locally and nationally. There is also no shortage of true crime programs** detailing the most heinous crimes one could imagine being committed against other human beings; it’s all very disturbing. Our jails and prisons surely must be overflowing from these creeps!

One would think that roving bands of murderous thugs are on every street in America, yet we each almost always make it to and from work, to and from running errands and eating out unmolested. Our odds of being killed in an auto accident*** are many times greater than being victim to this roving band of murderous thugs. How can this be? In most auto accidents, the victim may try to find an accident attorney to seek legal advice or take legal action.

While we should each be vigilant and aware of our surroundings and always use common sense, the perception that our prisoners are overflowing with mostly violent criminals just isn’t true. Figure 1 shows the U.S. prison population under the purview of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. The BOP population accounts for 202,493 of America’s 2.3 million prisoners.

Figure 1

Source: Bureau of Prisons as of February 2009

Source: Bureau of Prisons as of February 2009


» Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Obama’s Policy to Fight Mexican Drug Cartels is Doomed to Fail

Crime and Punishment, Criminal Justice Reform, Culture, Democrats, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Foreign Affairs, Free Trade, General, Government Incompetence, Government Regulation, Government Waste, History, Hubris, Human Rights, Immigration, Legal, Liberty, Military, Monopolies, Politics, Republicans, Security, The Nanny State, The Surveillance State, The War on Drugs, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

The Obama administration, rather than dealing with the root cause of the violence along the Mexican border, has decided to adopt a policy to deal with the symptoms. The problem is that this policy will neither alleviate the symptoms nor come close to treating the problem.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration promised Tuesday to help Mexico fight its drug war by cutting off the cartels’ supply of guns and profits, while resisting the Texas governor’s call for a troop surge at the border to ward off spillover violence.

Let’s assume for a moment that Obama’s policy to prevent Mexico bound firearms from leaving the U.S. 100% successful. Given the fact that the drug cartels can acquire firearms from other sources (such as corrupt Mexican government agents with access to firearms among other sources) the only difference would be that the firearms are no longer coming from the U.S.

The Obama administration correctly identifies that the drug cartels are so powerful because of the profitability of the illicit drug trade. It’s this ability to make enormous profits, particularly in an impoverished country as Mexico, that attracts players into the business and makes corruption on the part of government officials almost irresistible. Unfortunately, though the Obama administration has identified the profitability of the drug trade as the source of the drug cartels’ power, there is clearly a profound misunderstanding of the way basic economics work (as if the bailouts, handouts, and myriad of other government programs were not proof enough).

The steps announced by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano – 450 federal agents shifted to border duty, supplied with dogs trained to detect both drugs and cash, and scanners to check vehicles and railcars heading into Mexico – amount to a subtle but important shift:

The blockade of contraband will now be a two-way effort. The fence begun under the Bush administration will be completed, to deter smugglers of drugs and workers. But the new emphasis will be on disrupting the southbound flow of profits and weapons that fuel the cartels.

At his televised news conference Tuesday, President Barack Obama said that for now, it’s more important to disrupt the cartels’ access to profits and weapons than to fortify the border with soldiers.

“That’s what makes them so dangerous,” he said. “The steps that we’ve taken are designed to make sure that the border communities in the United States are protected and you’re not seeing a spillover of violence. … If the steps that we’ve taken do not get the job done, then we will do more.”

So what’s wrong with this approach? The basic economic law of supply and demand tells us that whenever a product is in high demand (drugs in this case) and the supply is lower (in this case by successful drug interdiction by the U.S. governemnt), those who supply the given demand stand to profit more NOT LESS! Whether Obama’s policy results in a decrease in the supply of drugs of 1% or 99%, those drugs which do make it to the end customer will pay even more to get them.

I would even go as far as to say that the Mexican drug cartels would cheer this policy. Sure, the cartels might have more difficulty moving their product into the U.S. and their profit and firearms out of the U.S. but for the most clever smugglers, these enhanced drug interdiction efforts would filter out the competition! (And we know how black market operators hate competition).

On some level, I do believe that even the political class understand this but somewhere, there is a disconnect. Just yesterday in her visit to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted that the war on (some) drugs over the past 30+ years “has not worked.”

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade.”

And now the disconnect:

“Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians…”

Mrs. Clinton apparently recognizes how the war on (some) drugs has been an abject failure fails to realize that the Chosen One’s policies will do little to reverse this trend. If she truly wants to do something productive, something has to be done about what she (correctly) describes as this “insatiable demand” for these drugs. She seems to understand that the “Just say No” campaign didn’t work but does she and others within the Obama administration really believe that more drug hysteria PSA’s will do anything to curb this demand?

Given how the Obama administration has decided to deal with the drug war related violence along the border, I’m not optimistic. If spending billions of dollars annually on this insane war on (some) drugs which has contributed to leading the world in the number of people in prison (imprisoning 1 out of every 100 adults; more than half of the U.S. prison population is there because of drug related offenses) has failed to curb the demand, then perhaps it’s time to try a different approach.

Nothing short of legalizing the drug trade will stop the violence, so why does the politicos, law enforcement, and government bureaucrats at almost every level continue the same “get tough” policy which clearly has not worked? The only conclusion I can come to: they must be high.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Ruining Our Economy Is A Domestic Matter — No Foreigners Allowed

Credit Crisis, Economics, Free Trade, Government Incompetence, Government Regulation, Government Transparency, Immigration, Politics

From a NYT story about new banking regulations attached to the bailout funds (and the desire for some of these banks to now return the money):

The list of demands keeps getting longer.

Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds.

Now, I understand canceling employee training. After all, you wouldn’t want to teach the people who got us into this mess to change their behavior. When nationalization is complete, they’ll be government employees, so no accountability is necessary! And morale-building is also out — they should be happy following the dictates of Dear Leader, and no morale building should be necessary for our properly conditioned citizens subjects.

But withdrawing job offers to foreign citizens? Do we really need another protectionist dictate coming out of this administration? Don’t we want to extend jobs to the most qualified of anyone who applies, not limit this to only Americans? This sounds like exactly the sort of provision I’d expect from the Bush administration and Republicans, and we’re supposed to believe that this is Change&#153?!

Hat Tip: Economist Free Exchange Blog

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

ChIndia Won’t “Beat” Us, Because We’re Already Forfeiting

Economics, Foreign Affairs, Free Trade, Government Regulation, Immigration

Many people have worried about the threat that China and India post to America by moving towards first-world economic powers. After all, they have, between the two of them, somewhere in the realm of 2.5B people, and if the same proportion of their students become engineers and scientists as we see here, they will be able to assume the dominant economic place in the world by sheer size.

I think the “threat” is overblown. As a fellow engineer, I welcome those people to the workforce. Human progress is driven by technology, and the addition of that many engineers and scientists to the global workforce will improve standards of living worldwide. Heck, I want to go to space before I die, and if we have thousands more engineers trying to make space travel (or just space tourism) a reality, it’s a lot more likely to occur in my lifetime than if only Americans pursue the goal. In addition, perhaps some new technological breakthroughs can extend my lifetime beyond the 75-100 years it’s currently likely to last, improving the quality as it extends as well.

But some people see China and India as a threat. They see the world as a zero sum game, and if China and India become more wealthy, they will do so by making America less wealthy. Those people are wrong, but it doesn’t stop them from being heard.

And they’re heard — which is why I say that while I’m not worried that China and India will “beat” us, I am very worried that we’re forfeiting the match. The only entity that can stop us is us, if we restrict our own freedom to excel in the name of foreign protectionism and a domestic democratic welfare state. Or, to put it more simply, if we follow Europe’s example.

And it appears that we’re doing so:

Some recent work by the Kauffman Foundation underlines how dumb the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress are to use America’s economic woes as an excuse for restricting skilled immigration. Americans have always assumed that skilled immigrants would do anything to get a bite at the American dream. But other countries are producing high-tech clusters that offer bright people plenty of opportunities. They are also putting out welcome mats for the talented rather than building bureaucratic obstacle courses.

Kauffman points out that a growing number of educated Chinese and Indian immigrants are returning home, in response to growing economic opportunities. The repatriation of these workhorses, combined with innumerable decisions by other immigrants to try somewhere more welcoming, could have a devastating impact on the American economy.

Engineers are a pretty multicultural bunch. In fact, my first 5 bosses in 7 years of post-college employment (through my first two jobs) were foreign-born. I’ve worked with native-born Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Egyptians, Persians (aka Iranians), Pakistanis, and quite a few Canucks (among many others, of course). In the grand scheme of things, it’s a pretty colorblind society, because it’s very easy to determine who’s technically capable and who’s a seat-warmer, and it rarely has anything to do with country of origin. It’s not always easy to lure a talented worker away from his family, his culture, and country, but if you do, he can become a very valued asset.

In fact, given the social ostracism that most American engineers endured through primary schooling (let’s just say we’re not typically drawn from the most ‘popular’ social groups), American engineers are potentially more likely to seek alternate shores if better opportunities arise. While my personal family situation doesn’t allow for it, I’d definitely consider relocating overseas if the opportunity was right. The last thing we need to do in America is to close our doors to the most talented of the world, and at the same time introduce policies which force our own most talented to consider leaving.

America won’t be “beaten” by other nations. We may — if we remain free — be joined by other nations, but that’s to our mutual benefit If we turn away from our freedom and capitalism and are then surpassed, though, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/
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