Thursday, May 31, 2007
Helmet Laws
Concerning motorcycle helmet laws, I understand the argument saying higher health insurance costs must be paid by the general citizenry for motorcyclists' stupidity, but I respectfully disagree. Cost reduction arguments are a slippery slope to more government intrusion, like criminalizing fatties or smokers or people who like to eat greasy fried chicken - it's putting a price on freedom. Even well-intentioned safety concern is not a sufficient reason to restrict freedom, and the ultimate effect is to infantilize citizens, and try to protect us from ourselves. Another real-world example of this from last weekend - my dad got a $75 ticket for not having a life jacket in his canoe while paddling the creek in front of his house. Even though he is an excellent swimmer and was in less than 5 feet of water, the government believes it knows better than my 56 year old dad what is safe for him. Any parent worth a damn will raise their child to know about seatbelts and life jackets and helmets - it's none of the government's business. My view is that the government acting as safety police further contributes to the pussification of American men. It angers me that many adults in this country are right now fastening their seatbelts not for their personal safety, but out of fear of the police. I have no doubt that eliminating all these BS "crimes" from the books would result in more death and injury, but the price of freedom is responsibility. A grown man has got to know his limitations, and in the USA he should have the freedom to live or die by his own motherfucking decisions.
Memorial Day
I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Washington Post
Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.
This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.
What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?
Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.
As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.
I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."
Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.
This, I can now see, was an illusion.
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."
To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province.
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Washington Post
Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.
Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.
This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.
What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way?
Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen.
As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.
I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."
Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.
This, I can now see, was an illusion.
The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."
To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.
To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.
Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.
Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.
Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.
This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.
In joining the Army, my son was following in his father's footsteps: Before he was born, I had served in Vietnam. As military officers, we shared an ironic kinship of sorts, each of us demonstrating a peculiar knack for picking the wrong war at the wrong time. Yet he was the better soldier -- brave and steadfast and irrepressible.
I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.
Andrew J. Bacevich teaches history and international relations at Boston University. His son died May 13 after a suicide bomb explosion in Salah al-Din province.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Foreign Entanglements
Ron Paul's main point about low enthusiasm for foreign intervention specifically invokes traditional conservatism. Think of the first president Bush not wanting to invade Iraq and take out Saddam after the first gulf war - prudence. The US has more than 100 years of history linking it to terrible failures at global "democracy promotion" (read TR on the futility of the Phillipines project), all the way thru the isolationist Republicans of the 20th century. Conservatives did not want to get involved in WWII even though Hitler was mowing down eastern Europe - we wanted to be like Switzerland until the Japanese made a fatal mistake. If there were not the purported WMD threat and the run-up to the current Iraq occupation had been all about spreading freedom, I don't think the public would have supported it. I also don't think the average American gives a flying fuck about the fate of the Iraqi people - if we help ruin enough of that county so that the ungrateful Iraqis are no longer seen as a threat, support for the continued occupation will plummet (see current situation). Americans don't want the US to be the world police and historically don't care about the status of foreign nations unless they are perceived as a threat. All the Bush administration's subsequent reasons for invading Iraq were not THE reason the American people supported going there at the time. Because our entire pretense was Saddam's violation of UN resolutions and timetables about his weapons disclosure, WMD was also the only legally valid reason to go there. For everyone in the world who is not an American, that is seen as a big deal. Even after Iraq, there still is not an acceptable reason for preemptive invasion that does not involve a threat. The result of occupying Iraq will be that preemption is less likely in the future, not more. The disconnect between Iraq and 9/11 is the reason this country still supports being in Afghanistan, but not Iraq. There are several concrete negatives resulting from the invasion, in addition to thousands of dead americans and hundreds of billions spent. We gave a strategic and propaganda gift to Iran by taking out their longtime enemy Saddam, and bogging down our military by invading a fellow muslim nation. We gave bin Laden a wet dream by invading a muslim country that did not attack us, thereby helping his narrative about the oppressive Great Satan who wants to conquer and humiliate muslims. As discussed before, administration orders from the top to lower our detainee treatment standards have done more damage to our crippled PR offensive than we can imagine.
Starting a global program of spreading democracy is a hyper-liberal idea and is historically futile. There are just too many screwed up countries in this world for the US to democratize them all - Americans (especially geezers like Ron Paul) understand that all too well. Basically his position is let's look at every republican administration before this one for historical lessons and guidance. If you look back at the last three pie-in-the-sky state of the union speeches given by GWB, all of the grand themes of spreading democracy have been quickly scaled back by the reality on the ground. General Petraeus says he has a 25% chance of success - he says there is no military solution to Iraq. While GIs are dying daily, the Iraqi politicians are taking the summer off. Global terrorist attacks are up, the last 6 months in Iraq have recorded thousands of bodies in the street, the Green Zone is attacked daily. Freedom on the march? China is on the rise and owning more of us each day, and Russia is succeeding is crushing democracy. Do you applaud our unprecedented adventure in preemptive war? Do you want to attack Russia? How about North Korea or Iran? Saudi Arabia or China? Venezuela? How about all at once? Saying we don't have the men or money to do all that is not defeatist. It is sane. It is also traditionally conservative.
*Now what do we do about a foreign genocide? How many deaths constitutes genocide, and when should we deploy the American military to save non-American lives?
Starting a global program of spreading democracy is a hyper-liberal idea and is historically futile. There are just too many screwed up countries in this world for the US to democratize them all - Americans (especially geezers like Ron Paul) understand that all too well. Basically his position is let's look at every republican administration before this one for historical lessons and guidance. If you look back at the last three pie-in-the-sky state of the union speeches given by GWB, all of the grand themes of spreading democracy have been quickly scaled back by the reality on the ground. General Petraeus says he has a 25% chance of success - he says there is no military solution to Iraq. While GIs are dying daily, the Iraqi politicians are taking the summer off. Global terrorist attacks are up, the last 6 months in Iraq have recorded thousands of bodies in the street, the Green Zone is attacked daily. Freedom on the march? China is on the rise and owning more of us each day, and Russia is succeeding is crushing democracy. Do you applaud our unprecedented adventure in preemptive war? Do you want to attack Russia? How about North Korea or Iran? Saudi Arabia or China? Venezuela? How about all at once? Saying we don't have the men or money to do all that is not defeatist. It is sane. It is also traditionally conservative.
*Now what do we do about a foreign genocide? How many deaths constitutes genocide, and when should we deploy the American military to save non-American lives?
Canada Hypothetical
Can Americans relate to the average Iraqi? For argument's sake, what if Canada (don't laugh) decided to liberate us from George Bush? In Canada's view, the US has become a threatening neighbor. There are no poison gas or mass graves, but there are significant attacks on civil liberties. Canada sees the the rapid decline of US superiority in the world in hard statistics like infant mortality, life expectancy, gun violence, literacy, health care crisis, oil consumption a threat to the environment, etc. Canada's population is seen as relatively secular and accomodating in contrast to growing US religious fundamentalist fervor. Canada remembers helping all the Vietnam draft dodgers from 35 years ago trying to flee the US. They notice the articles in US media favorably comparing Canada to the US, and record thousands of US "refugees" moving north after the 2004 re-election of bush. They watch president bush on TV talking about Jesus and appointing incompetent cronies, and conclude that the US is quickly becoming a fascist dicatorship. They see the US sliding deeper into debt and they fear we may do something crazy. They feel threatened by sharing a border with a country holding tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. They demand we disarm or face retaliation. Like US alarm over Iraq attacking Kuwait, Canada is alarmed by the US invading and occupying a country that did not attack it first. Images of Abu Ghraib broadcast around the world undercuts any US pretense of a noble cause. Canada follows the US precedent of preemtive war - it figures better to attack the US while their military is pinned down in a foreign occupation, and in a weak position. Vast natural resources and economic ties parallel our desire for access to Iraq's oil - so US forests, oil rigs and coal deposits are guarded by the RCMP. Washinton DC is destroyed, occupied, and new Canadian military outposts and embassies are sprouting up everywhere. Members of your family are accidentally killed by Canadian drones targeting the wrong house of "insurgents". Now imagine how you would feel if Dudley Doowright knocked on your door and demanded (in French!) that you surrender your weapon.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Freedom In America
(author unknown)
(April 2007 speech at Concord, NH College - on freedom in America)
I want to give a bit of pre-constitutional history, and share with you the story of John Lilburne, an Englishman born in the early 1600s because his story—the story of an agitator who directly challenged the English legal system—has a great deal to tell us about the issues we're facing today. Lilburne's story explains why these matters—torture and secrecy—were not issues to the Founding Fathers, and it helps us understand the true nature of a government which, like the current administration, thrives in that matrix of torture and secrecy.
So much of what has happened over the last six years seems a repetition of events drawn from English history, from the turbulent years from the Civil War to the Glorious Revolution—this could be said of the struggle over habeas corpus, which was right at the center of the conflict between Parliament and king, as seen in the Five Knights case of 1627 or the Shipmaster's tax case of 1637. But the notion of secret legal proceedings, closed courts and the use of secret evidence also characterize that period of history. Before the English Civil War, court proceedings were frequently closed, and one of the principles of fair process introduced in the Commonwealth—it seems to have been an initiative of the solicitor general, John Cooke—was the notion that no court should conduct its hearings behind closed doors, and neither should any evidence be taken which could not be shared with the public and presented to the defendant and the jury.
The key case for this notion involved a man commonly called “Freeborn John,” or John Lilburne. He was a person of little formal education who became a firebrand pamphleteer among the Puritans in the years of the Civil War. He had republican sentiments, but more to the point he was a sharp critic of the king's justice—writing constantly of the aspects which were, well, unjust. He was particularly outraged by the use of the king's courts to persecute dissenters, as the Anglicans called them—though at the time this would be a changing blend of Puritans, Calvinists, Baptists and Quakers; not to mention the “terrorists” of the day, the Catholics. Lilburne had been convicted in the Star Chamber in 1638 on a charge of importation and dissemination of unregistered religious tracts. He wrote a compelling account of his treatment—he had been imprisoned for refusing to answer questions and then flogged, pilloried and gagged—but he also described the use of coercive interrogation techniques to extract a confession, the denial of rights of confrontation, the fact that his judges were all political figures placed there to do their king's bidding—the Star Chamber, you see, was to Lilburne's age what the Military Commission is to ours.
His account was an instant bestseller and provided much of the impetus for the abolition of the Star Chamber by the Long Parliament in 1641. As Uncle Tom's Cabin was to abolition, Liburne's book was to habeas corpus and the Star Chamber. Lilburne served with distinction as an officer during the Civil War, and afterwards his advocacy of Republican virtues caused Oliver Cromwell a bit of discomfort, and at length Cromwell decided to silence Lilburne by charging him with treason. The trial convened in October 1649, which is to say just months after the second Civil War had been successfully concluded for the Parliamentary forces.
This was in effect the second significant trial for the Commonwealth after the trial of King Charles himself in January. Lilburne was a popular figure in London and was well aware of that fact. When the court proceedings commenced behind closed doors in the Painted Chamber of Westminster, Lilburne opened his answer to the charges read in court with these famous words: “The first fundamental liberty of an Englishman is that all courts of justice always ought to be free and open for all sorts of peaceable people to see, behold and hear, and have free access unto; and no man whatsoever ought to be tried in holes or corners, or in any place where the gates are shut and barred.” Lilburne was raising a direct challenge to the reputation of the Commonwealth courts—asking whether one of the most abusive of the practices of justice under the Stuart monarchs would be continued. The court fully understood this and directed that the doors be opened, in order that “all the world may know with what candour and justice the court does proceed against you.”
In the balance of that remarkable case, Lilburne established a number of other principles. The prisoner in the dock was to be treated with dignity and respect, not dragged before the court in manacles and an orange jumpsuit. There were to be no ex parte communications between the counsel and the court. He was to have a right to confront all evidence against him (that is, there could be no secret evidence), and the public also was to be allowed to hear it, to form its own opinion of the quality of justice dispensed by the court. He was guaranteed the right of counsel, and for the first time, counsel were permitted to participate in the presentation of evidence for the defense as well.
The fairness of the proceedings had its limit. The judge charged the jury that they must convict, saying “never was the like treason hatched in England.” But the vigor of Lilburne's defense was impressive and the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. (To this day, some attribute the acquittal to Judge Keble's refusal of the jurors' request of a “butt of sack,” which is to say, a very large quantity of fortified wine, as a pre-deliberation refreshment).
The Lilburne case sums up the most significant of what may be called the “Commonwealth reforms” of criminal procedure—one of the few legacies of the revolution to survive the restoration of the monarchy.
Secrecy was what the Roundheads found most odious about the Stuart monarchs' justice. Certainly unjust practices accompanied some of our Puritan forefathers to this country; we can't forget the Salem witch trials, for instance. But so too, did a healthy contempt for the abuses practiced by the Stuart monarchs, starting with the notions of torture and secret courts with secret evidence. The contempt was reciprocal of course—they say that King Charles' lip would curl at the very mention of the word “Massachusetts,” and seven of the ten members of the first graduating class of Harvard—the class of 1642—returned to England to enlist in the Model Army and fight against the King. The practice of secret courts. The use of torture to secure confessions. The receipt of secret evidence. The exclusion of the public from proceedings. The offering of evidence in the form of summaries delivered to the judges, without the defendant being able to confront the evidence or conduct a cross-examination. These practices were the definition of tyrannical injustice to the Puritan fathers and the Founding Fathers. We thought them long-banished a hundred years and more before our own revolution. And now suddenly here they are again.
Secrecy has reemerged just as torture has made its comeback, being justified on the public stage, by government officials for the first time since the famous gathering at the Inns of Court in 1629 at which the judges declared “upon their and their nation's honor” that torture was not permitted by the common law.
The two fit together, hand in glove: torture and secrecy. Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable.
Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state.
If we look quickly at the proceedings that held the world's attention down in Gitmo over the last two weeks, we see what the secrecy is all about.
When the Combat Status Review Tribunal process commenced, the Pentagon told us that the proceedings would not be open to the public. Instead, it said, a transcript would be offered up to the public a few days later, giving the Pentagon an opportunity to redact “classified national security” information from the transcripts. Pete Yost of the Associated Press gave me a ring just as this came out and asked: what do you suppose they think is going to require censoring? I said the answer is clear based on submissions the Department of Justice has made in four or five cases: they will take the position that any evidence of torture must be censored or expunged, because the testimony would disclose the specific torture techniques which have been applied, and that would divulge highly classified national security data. Why do you think the DVDs of the treatment of Jose Padilla, all two dozen copies, mysteriously disappeared? Why, as Colonel Couch recently told the Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin, did the recording devices inexplicably malfunction whenever torture incidents occurred? Yes. Why indeed. Of course, I was relying not only on what was said and done in Padilla, El-Masri, Arar and other cases, but also on Terry Gilliam's movie, “Brazil,” in which all of this morally deviant thinking is taken to its logical conclusion. What the Bush Administration has created in Gitmo is “Brazil,” minus, of course, any pretense of humor.
Now we have the first two transcripts, and the results are exactly that. The torture is cut out. The case of al-Nashiri is particularly striking:
PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.
DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And if I didn't replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).
Now let's consider—would there be any need to censor the allegations unless they are true? No. Indeed, the fact that they are censored should be taken as an admission. No meaningful effort is made to refute any of the detainee's contentions. No records are spread out showing that he was not tortured. Why might that be?
And the second case for secrecy we see in the trial of David Hicks, which follows a pattern established with the John Walker Lindh case. It came to a plea bargain in the end, and a strong focus on silencing the witness. In particular, he was to be gagged as to everything that was done to him while he was in U.S. custody for a period of one year, which is to say, until the Australian elections are past. The plea bargain, it appears, was negotiated by Susan J. Crawford, a protégée of Vice President Cheney, and Cheney had only six weeks earlier visited Australian Prime Minister John Howard downunder. According to accounts of their meeting published at the time in the Australian press, at the top of Howard's agenda was an urgent plea to bring the Hicks case to a speedy conclusion that would allow him to serve a brief sentence in Australia. Crawford delivered exactly what was requested.
There is a common theme to these cases. Secrecy is not invoked to protect military or legitimate state security confidences. It is invoked for nakedly political reasons, or darker and still more likely, to obscure crimes and avoid the creation of court records which would document them.
On April 27, 1961, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in the Waldorf-Astoria to the American Newspaper Association. “The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society;” Kennedy said “and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control.”
I believe that the moment—the day of “official censorship and concealment”—that Kennedy foresaw is drawing near, if it is not already upon us in America today. The moment has crept upon us by stealth, as a result of decisions taken at the highest level in government. These decisions have been made behind closed doors, with no public discussion—and indeed with a concerted effort to misdirect the public as to the gravity of the changes in policy which have been undertaken. They have led to a dramatic expansion of Government action without oversight, which is to say on the basis of a decision by the President unchecked by courts and Congress, and to a shrinkage of individual freedom.
We have a duty to posterity, and that is to bear witness to these events. We must document them carefully. We must act to avoid the destruction of valuable evidence—and recognize, as we have already seen, that it is in the character of those who commit crimes to destroy the evidence of their misdeeds. In this way we lay the path for the justice which will in good time be meted out to those who betrayed a nation's trust. For I believe, like the Puritans, in the certainty that justice will triumph and that wrongdoers will be held to account, though I am not so foolish as to think that this will happen soon. Still, the time is coming, as John Milton wrote,
"that sun part the clouds which tyrants muster, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need."
(April 2007 speech at Concord, NH College - on freedom in America)
I want to give a bit of pre-constitutional history, and share with you the story of John Lilburne, an Englishman born in the early 1600s because his story—the story of an agitator who directly challenged the English legal system—has a great deal to tell us about the issues we're facing today. Lilburne's story explains why these matters—torture and secrecy—were not issues to the Founding Fathers, and it helps us understand the true nature of a government which, like the current administration, thrives in that matrix of torture and secrecy.
So much of what has happened over the last six years seems a repetition of events drawn from English history, from the turbulent years from the Civil War to the Glorious Revolution—this could be said of the struggle over habeas corpus, which was right at the center of the conflict between Parliament and king, as seen in the Five Knights case of 1627 or the Shipmaster's tax case of 1637. But the notion of secret legal proceedings, closed courts and the use of secret evidence also characterize that period of history. Before the English Civil War, court proceedings were frequently closed, and one of the principles of fair process introduced in the Commonwealth—it seems to have been an initiative of the solicitor general, John Cooke—was the notion that no court should conduct its hearings behind closed doors, and neither should any evidence be taken which could not be shared with the public and presented to the defendant and the jury.
The key case for this notion involved a man commonly called “Freeborn John,” or John Lilburne. He was a person of little formal education who became a firebrand pamphleteer among the Puritans in the years of the Civil War. He had republican sentiments, but more to the point he was a sharp critic of the king's justice—writing constantly of the aspects which were, well, unjust. He was particularly outraged by the use of the king's courts to persecute dissenters, as the Anglicans called them—though at the time this would be a changing blend of Puritans, Calvinists, Baptists and Quakers; not to mention the “terrorists” of the day, the Catholics. Lilburne had been convicted in the Star Chamber in 1638 on a charge of importation and dissemination of unregistered religious tracts. He wrote a compelling account of his treatment—he had been imprisoned for refusing to answer questions and then flogged, pilloried and gagged—but he also described the use of coercive interrogation techniques to extract a confession, the denial of rights of confrontation, the fact that his judges were all political figures placed there to do their king's bidding—the Star Chamber, you see, was to Lilburne's age what the Military Commission is to ours.
His account was an instant bestseller and provided much of the impetus for the abolition of the Star Chamber by the Long Parliament in 1641. As Uncle Tom's Cabin was to abolition, Liburne's book was to habeas corpus and the Star Chamber. Lilburne served with distinction as an officer during the Civil War, and afterwards his advocacy of Republican virtues caused Oliver Cromwell a bit of discomfort, and at length Cromwell decided to silence Lilburne by charging him with treason. The trial convened in October 1649, which is to say just months after the second Civil War had been successfully concluded for the Parliamentary forces.
This was in effect the second significant trial for the Commonwealth after the trial of King Charles himself in January. Lilburne was a popular figure in London and was well aware of that fact. When the court proceedings commenced behind closed doors in the Painted Chamber of Westminster, Lilburne opened his answer to the charges read in court with these famous words: “The first fundamental liberty of an Englishman is that all courts of justice always ought to be free and open for all sorts of peaceable people to see, behold and hear, and have free access unto; and no man whatsoever ought to be tried in holes or corners, or in any place where the gates are shut and barred.” Lilburne was raising a direct challenge to the reputation of the Commonwealth courts—asking whether one of the most abusive of the practices of justice under the Stuart monarchs would be continued. The court fully understood this and directed that the doors be opened, in order that “all the world may know with what candour and justice the court does proceed against you.”
In the balance of that remarkable case, Lilburne established a number of other principles. The prisoner in the dock was to be treated with dignity and respect, not dragged before the court in manacles and an orange jumpsuit. There were to be no ex parte communications between the counsel and the court. He was to have a right to confront all evidence against him (that is, there could be no secret evidence), and the public also was to be allowed to hear it, to form its own opinion of the quality of justice dispensed by the court. He was guaranteed the right of counsel, and for the first time, counsel were permitted to participate in the presentation of evidence for the defense as well.
The fairness of the proceedings had its limit. The judge charged the jury that they must convict, saying “never was the like treason hatched in England.” But the vigor of Lilburne's defense was impressive and the jury returned a verdict of acquittal. (To this day, some attribute the acquittal to Judge Keble's refusal of the jurors' request of a “butt of sack,” which is to say, a very large quantity of fortified wine, as a pre-deliberation refreshment).
The Lilburne case sums up the most significant of what may be called the “Commonwealth reforms” of criminal procedure—one of the few legacies of the revolution to survive the restoration of the monarchy.
Secrecy was what the Roundheads found most odious about the Stuart monarchs' justice. Certainly unjust practices accompanied some of our Puritan forefathers to this country; we can't forget the Salem witch trials, for instance. But so too, did a healthy contempt for the abuses practiced by the Stuart monarchs, starting with the notions of torture and secret courts with secret evidence. The contempt was reciprocal of course—they say that King Charles' lip would curl at the very mention of the word “Massachusetts,” and seven of the ten members of the first graduating class of Harvard—the class of 1642—returned to England to enlist in the Model Army and fight against the King. The practice of secret courts. The use of torture to secure confessions. The receipt of secret evidence. The exclusion of the public from proceedings. The offering of evidence in the form of summaries delivered to the judges, without the defendant being able to confront the evidence or conduct a cross-examination. These practices were the definition of tyrannical injustice to the Puritan fathers and the Founding Fathers. We thought them long-banished a hundred years and more before our own revolution. And now suddenly here they are again.
Secrecy has reemerged just as torture has made its comeback, being justified on the public stage, by government officials for the first time since the famous gathering at the Inns of Court in 1629 at which the judges declared “upon their and their nation's honor” that torture was not permitted by the common law.
The two fit together, hand in glove: torture and secrecy. Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable.
Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state.
If we look quickly at the proceedings that held the world's attention down in Gitmo over the last two weeks, we see what the secrecy is all about.
When the Combat Status Review Tribunal process commenced, the Pentagon told us that the proceedings would not be open to the public. Instead, it said, a transcript would be offered up to the public a few days later, giving the Pentagon an opportunity to redact “classified national security” information from the transcripts. Pete Yost of the Associated Press gave me a ring just as this came out and asked: what do you suppose they think is going to require censoring? I said the answer is clear based on submissions the Department of Justice has made in four or five cases: they will take the position that any evidence of torture must be censored or expunged, because the testimony would disclose the specific torture techniques which have been applied, and that would divulge highly classified national security data. Why do you think the DVDs of the treatment of Jose Padilla, all two dozen copies, mysteriously disappeared? Why, as Colonel Couch recently told the Wall Street Journal's Jess Bravin, did the recording devices inexplicably malfunction whenever torture incidents occurred? Yes. Why indeed. Of course, I was relying not only on what was said and done in Padilla, El-Masri, Arar and other cases, but also on Terry Gilliam's movie, “Brazil,” in which all of this morally deviant thinking is taken to its logical conclusion. What the Bush Administration has created in Gitmo is “Brazil,” minus, of course, any pretense of humor.
Now we have the first two transcripts, and the results are exactly that. The torture is cut out. The case of al-Nashiri is particularly striking:
PRESIDENT (of the tribunal): Please describe the methods that were used.
DETAINEE: (CENSORED) What else do I want to say? (CENSORED) There were doing so many things. What else did they did? (CENSORED) After that another method of torture began. (CENSORED) They used to ask me questions and the investigator after that used to laugh. And, I used to answer the answer that I knew. And if I didn't replay what I heard, he used to (CENSORED).
Now let's consider—would there be any need to censor the allegations unless they are true? No. Indeed, the fact that they are censored should be taken as an admission. No meaningful effort is made to refute any of the detainee's contentions. No records are spread out showing that he was not tortured. Why might that be?
And the second case for secrecy we see in the trial of David Hicks, which follows a pattern established with the John Walker Lindh case. It came to a plea bargain in the end, and a strong focus on silencing the witness. In particular, he was to be gagged as to everything that was done to him while he was in U.S. custody for a period of one year, which is to say, until the Australian elections are past. The plea bargain, it appears, was negotiated by Susan J. Crawford, a protégée of Vice President Cheney, and Cheney had only six weeks earlier visited Australian Prime Minister John Howard downunder. According to accounts of their meeting published at the time in the Australian press, at the top of Howard's agenda was an urgent plea to bring the Hicks case to a speedy conclusion that would allow him to serve a brief sentence in Australia. Crawford delivered exactly what was requested.
There is a common theme to these cases. Secrecy is not invoked to protect military or legitimate state security confidences. It is invoked for nakedly political reasons, or darker and still more likely, to obscure crimes and avoid the creation of court records which would document them.
On April 27, 1961, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in the Waldorf-Astoria to the American Newspaper Association. “The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society;” Kennedy said “and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control.”
I believe that the moment—the day of “official censorship and concealment”—that Kennedy foresaw is drawing near, if it is not already upon us in America today. The moment has crept upon us by stealth, as a result of decisions taken at the highest level in government. These decisions have been made behind closed doors, with no public discussion—and indeed with a concerted effort to misdirect the public as to the gravity of the changes in policy which have been undertaken. They have led to a dramatic expansion of Government action without oversight, which is to say on the basis of a decision by the President unchecked by courts and Congress, and to a shrinkage of individual freedom.
We have a duty to posterity, and that is to bear witness to these events. We must document them carefully. We must act to avoid the destruction of valuable evidence—and recognize, as we have already seen, that it is in the character of those who commit crimes to destroy the evidence of their misdeeds. In this way we lay the path for the justice which will in good time be meted out to those who betrayed a nation's trust. For I believe, like the Puritans, in the certainty that justice will triumph and that wrongdoers will be held to account, though I am not so foolish as to think that this will happen soon. Still, the time is coming, as John Milton wrote,
"that sun part the clouds which tyrants muster, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need."
Against Hate Crimes
This National Review article articulates my opposition to hate crime laws. Bad thoughts should not be criminalized.
May 01, 2007, 4:30 a.m.
Hating Hate
By The Editors
Hate crimes “are different” from other crimes: That was the argument for hate-crimes laws that Al Gore made during the 2000 campaign, and it is the argument that we are going to hear again this week, as Congress takes up federal legislation on the subject. Crimes motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation are said to be different chiefly because they, supposedly, instill fear in entire communities and generate social division.Even if this generalization is true—and it is not obvious that it is—it should not end our thought about hate. There is no evidence that adding hate-crimes laws on top of regular criminal laws does anything to deter these acts. Nor is there any evidence that federal action is needed. Most states already have hate-crimes laws; the federal government has a hate-crimes law that applies to victims who were engaged in federally protected activities, such as holding rallies. The proposed legislation would allow the federal government to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, whether or not federally protected activities were involved, and to assist local law enforcement in fighting them. But there is no evidence that local law enforcement has a special need for federal resources to help it combat hate crimes.Many proponents of hate-crimes laws profess to have no desire to move against free speech. But we fear that it may be a short jump from prosecuting “hate crimes” to prosecuting “hate speech.” It is true that the law routinely looks into defendants’ motives, and that some motives tend to draw tougher sentences than others. But our social divisions, especially over homosexuality, make it especially dangerous for the law to inquire into defendants’ prejudices—and “prejudices.” We want to deter and punish crimes against blacks, women, homosexuals, and everyone else. But we do not want to open the door to legal punishment for harboring incorrect thoughts about controversial issues—especially when those incorrect thoughts are part of the historic teaching of our major religions.The bill’s sponsors seem, at best, oblivious to the risks. The bill’s definition of violence includes intimidation, which leaves considerable room for interpretation in the hate-crimes context. It also empowers the attorney general to help states enforce their own hate-crimes laws, which means that a liberal state, in concert with a liberal administration in Washington, could involve the federal government in envelope-pushing investigations and prosecutions. A new federal law in this area is unnecessary and dangerous, and ought to be defeated.
May 01, 2007, 4:30 a.m.
Hating Hate
By The Editors
Hate crimes “are different” from other crimes: That was the argument for hate-crimes laws that Al Gore made during the 2000 campaign, and it is the argument that we are going to hear again this week, as Congress takes up federal legislation on the subject. Crimes motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation are said to be different chiefly because they, supposedly, instill fear in entire communities and generate social division.Even if this generalization is true—and it is not obvious that it is—it should not end our thought about hate. There is no evidence that adding hate-crimes laws on top of regular criminal laws does anything to deter these acts. Nor is there any evidence that federal action is needed. Most states already have hate-crimes laws; the federal government has a hate-crimes law that applies to victims who were engaged in federally protected activities, such as holding rallies. The proposed legislation would allow the federal government to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, whether or not federally protected activities were involved, and to assist local law enforcement in fighting them. But there is no evidence that local law enforcement has a special need for federal resources to help it combat hate crimes.Many proponents of hate-crimes laws profess to have no desire to move against free speech. But we fear that it may be a short jump from prosecuting “hate crimes” to prosecuting “hate speech.” It is true that the law routinely looks into defendants’ motives, and that some motives tend to draw tougher sentences than others. But our social divisions, especially over homosexuality, make it especially dangerous for the law to inquire into defendants’ prejudices—and “prejudices.” We want to deter and punish crimes against blacks, women, homosexuals, and everyone else. But we do not want to open the door to legal punishment for harboring incorrect thoughts about controversial issues—especially when those incorrect thoughts are part of the historic teaching of our major religions.The bill’s sponsors seem, at best, oblivious to the risks. The bill’s definition of violence includes intimidation, which leaves considerable room for interpretation in the hate-crimes context. It also empowers the attorney general to help states enforce their own hate-crimes laws, which means that a liberal state, in concert with a liberal administration in Washington, could involve the federal government in envelope-pushing investigations and prosecutions. A new federal law in this area is unnecessary and dangerous, and ought to be defeated.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Domestic Content
Did you know that Chevrolet and Cadillac are French names?
Hard to tell what a "foreign" car is anymore...
Which vehicle has more "domestic content" - that is, percentage of parts value from the United States and Canada - the Toyota Corolla or the new Chevy Tahoe? I wouldn't ask that question if the answer weren't the Corolla - with 75% domestic content, according to the Detroit Free Press' calculation. The new Tahoe has only 67%, and 25% of its content is from Mexico. I always figured inexpensive small cars like the Chevy HHR and Cobalt were heavily Mexican. I didn't realize GM's huge gas guzzlin' SUVs were largely Mexico-sourced as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that! If you don't want unfettered immigration from Mexico then it makes sense to buy products that create decent jobs in Mexico. Still, you have to wonder if the price of maintaining Big Three UAW assembly jobs in the US is the outsourcing of more and more parts overseas. Honda, by way of contrast, doesn't have to support the UAW and is able to source 75 percent of it's Pilot and Ridgeline vehicles domestically. Some 80% of the Toyota Tundra is domestic.
Hard to tell what a "foreign" car is anymore...
Which vehicle has more "domestic content" - that is, percentage of parts value from the United States and Canada - the Toyota Corolla or the new Chevy Tahoe? I wouldn't ask that question if the answer weren't the Corolla - with 75% domestic content, according to the Detroit Free Press' calculation. The new Tahoe has only 67%, and 25% of its content is from Mexico. I always figured inexpensive small cars like the Chevy HHR and Cobalt were heavily Mexican. I didn't realize GM's huge gas guzzlin' SUVs were largely Mexico-sourced as well. Not that there's anything wrong with that! If you don't want unfettered immigration from Mexico then it makes sense to buy products that create decent jobs in Mexico. Still, you have to wonder if the price of maintaining Big Three UAW assembly jobs in the US is the outsourcing of more and more parts overseas. Honda, by way of contrast, doesn't have to support the UAW and is able to source 75 percent of it's Pilot and Ridgeline vehicles domestically. Some 80% of the Toyota Tundra is domestic.
Lazy, Job-Stealing Immigrants?
Lazy, Job-Stealing Immigrants?
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, April 30, 2007
President Bush is doing his pragmatic best to secure immigration reform. He is honorably laboring to revive some version of the bipartisan bill that got 62 votes in the Senate last year. But watching this torturous process is enough to make a sane person scream. The livelihoods of millions are at stake, yet most immigration pronouncements are nonsense.
People accuse immigrants of gang violence, drunken driving and a general contempt for the law. But in 2000 the incarceration rate for immigrants was just one-fifth the rate for the population as a whole, according to Kristin Butcher of the Federal Reserve and Anne Morrison Piehl of Rutgers University.
People say immigrants are feckless and lazy. But in California in 2004, 94 percent of undocumented men ages 18 to 64 were in the workforce, compared with 82 percent of native-born men. Far from being part of a shiftless underclass, the act of coming to the United States makes immigrants among the most upwardly mobile groups in the nation, only a bit behind hedge-fund managers.
People say, contrariwise, that immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans. But economists have patiently explained for years that there is no finite "lump of labor" in an economy. The presence of migrants causes new jobs to be created: Factories that might have gone abroad spring up in Arizona or Texas. Hasn't anyone noticed that California, where fully one-third of the adult population is foreign born, has an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent?
People say that immigrants burden social services while not paying taxes. Actually, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps and Medicaid; and although they do use hospital emergency rooms and schools, they also pay sales taxes and payroll taxes, and one in three pays income tax. The net result is that immigrants cost the average native U.S. household an extra $200 in taxes each year, according to a study of 1996 data. Once you take into account the boost to pretax incomes caused by immigrants' contribution to growth, the total effect of undocumented workers on native-born Americans is roughly zero, according to Gordon Hanson of the University of California at San Diego.
People say that immigrants cause wage losses even if they don't cause job losses. Here the story is subtle: Some studies find no evidence that immigrants pull down wages, while others find that native-born high school dropouts lost as much as 9 percent of their earnings between 1980 and 2000 as a result of immigration. But -- and here comes the sane scream -- there's no way that even a 9 percent wage loss can justify the policies that immigration hawks advocate.
Really, how much could draconian enforcement restore those wages? Between a quarter and two-fifths of undocumented workers originally enter legally, so stringent border enforcement could only affect about two-thirds of new arrivals. Moreover, arrivals are only part of the issue; the alleged downward pressure on wages comes less from the 400,000 illegal immigrants who show up each year than from the 35 million immigrants already here, two-thirds of them legally. And migrants will continue coming even if the entire southern border is walled off. Europe has a wall called the Mediterranean. It still has illegal immigrants.
Thanks to intensive enforcement over the past year, illegal immigration from Mexico is thought to have fallen by a quarter. Suppose even more spending could cut the number of illegal entrants from 400,000 to 200,000 a year, so that 2 million arrivals could be prevented over a 10-year period. Add in an aggressive deportation program that ejected 1 million illegals, and you are still only scratching the surface. Even if immigration has driven down wages for high school dropouts by 9 percent, it's hard to see how truly vicious counter-immigration policies could drive them up by more than about 2 percent.
That simply can't be worth it. Border security does not come cheap: We could save money on unmanned aerial drones and use it to help high-school dropouts with a more generous earned-income tax credit. And although the concern for high-school dropouts is welcome, it must be weighed against the aspirations of migrants. Is it right to push native workers' pay up by 2 percent if that means depriving poor Mexicans of a chance to triple their incomes?
Of course it isn't, and given that the total economic effect of immigration on U.S. households is a wash, the big ramp-up in enforcement spending beloved by immigration hawks is an egregious waste of money. But no politician is going to say that. Candidates with a good record on immigration -- Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, John McCain -- are trying to avoid the issue. And the demagogues and nativists are allowed to spout unchallenged nonsense.
By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, April 30, 2007
President Bush is doing his pragmatic best to secure immigration reform. He is honorably laboring to revive some version of the bipartisan bill that got 62 votes in the Senate last year. But watching this torturous process is enough to make a sane person scream. The livelihoods of millions are at stake, yet most immigration pronouncements are nonsense.
People accuse immigrants of gang violence, drunken driving and a general contempt for the law. But in 2000 the incarceration rate for immigrants was just one-fifth the rate for the population as a whole, according to Kristin Butcher of the Federal Reserve and Anne Morrison Piehl of Rutgers University.
People say immigrants are feckless and lazy. But in California in 2004, 94 percent of undocumented men ages 18 to 64 were in the workforce, compared with 82 percent of native-born men. Far from being part of a shiftless underclass, the act of coming to the United States makes immigrants among the most upwardly mobile groups in the nation, only a bit behind hedge-fund managers.
People say, contrariwise, that immigrants steal jobs from native-born Americans. But economists have patiently explained for years that there is no finite "lump of labor" in an economy. The presence of migrants causes new jobs to be created: Factories that might have gone abroad spring up in Arizona or Texas. Hasn't anyone noticed that California, where fully one-third of the adult population is foreign born, has an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent?
People say that immigrants burden social services while not paying taxes. Actually, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for welfare, food stamps and Medicaid; and although they do use hospital emergency rooms and schools, they also pay sales taxes and payroll taxes, and one in three pays income tax. The net result is that immigrants cost the average native U.S. household an extra $200 in taxes each year, according to a study of 1996 data. Once you take into account the boost to pretax incomes caused by immigrants' contribution to growth, the total effect of undocumented workers on native-born Americans is roughly zero, according to Gordon Hanson of the University of California at San Diego.
People say that immigrants cause wage losses even if they don't cause job losses. Here the story is subtle: Some studies find no evidence that immigrants pull down wages, while others find that native-born high school dropouts lost as much as 9 percent of their earnings between 1980 and 2000 as a result of immigration. But -- and here comes the sane scream -- there's no way that even a 9 percent wage loss can justify the policies that immigration hawks advocate.
Really, how much could draconian enforcement restore those wages? Between a quarter and two-fifths of undocumented workers originally enter legally, so stringent border enforcement could only affect about two-thirds of new arrivals. Moreover, arrivals are only part of the issue; the alleged downward pressure on wages comes less from the 400,000 illegal immigrants who show up each year than from the 35 million immigrants already here, two-thirds of them legally. And migrants will continue coming even if the entire southern border is walled off. Europe has a wall called the Mediterranean. It still has illegal immigrants.
Thanks to intensive enforcement over the past year, illegal immigration from Mexico is thought to have fallen by a quarter. Suppose even more spending could cut the number of illegal entrants from 400,000 to 200,000 a year, so that 2 million arrivals could be prevented over a 10-year period. Add in an aggressive deportation program that ejected 1 million illegals, and you are still only scratching the surface. Even if immigration has driven down wages for high school dropouts by 9 percent, it's hard to see how truly vicious counter-immigration policies could drive them up by more than about 2 percent.
That simply can't be worth it. Border security does not come cheap: We could save money on unmanned aerial drones and use it to help high-school dropouts with a more generous earned-income tax credit. And although the concern for high-school dropouts is welcome, it must be weighed against the aspirations of migrants. Is it right to push native workers' pay up by 2 percent if that means depriving poor Mexicans of a chance to triple their incomes?
Of course it isn't, and given that the total economic effect of immigration on U.S. households is a wash, the big ramp-up in enforcement spending beloved by immigration hawks is an egregious waste of money. But no politician is going to say that. Candidates with a good record on immigration -- Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, John McCain -- are trying to avoid the issue. And the demagogues and nativists are allowed to spout unchallenged nonsense.
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