Category Archives: Law

Regulation Encourages Recklessness

Business, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Law, Private Property, Regulation

REGULATION ENCOURAGES RECKLESSNESS; private property rights in waterways is the solution to the pollution of the ocean.

FoxNews informs that “The 20-year-old Oil Pollution Act would make BP responsible for paying for the cleanup costs [of the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico]. There have been questions raised about another part of the law that caps their liability at $75 million for other economic damages. … the damages could easily top $75 million. A handful of senators, though, have introduced a bill to raise the cap to $10 billion, which the administration supported.”

State regulation works to the advantage of offenders, as the state and its corporate donors invariably come to an agreement about what constitutes reasonable damages—agreements that usually disadvantage harmed parties.

Leave injured parties to sue for damages. However, for a just tort system to work one needs … private property. Private property rights in waterways, or riparian rights in water that abuts private property—this is the best way to protect the ocean and other hitherto state-controlled expanses of water from being destroyed.

Fact Sheet On New Arizona Immigration Law

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Law, Propaganda

CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES ON THE NEW ARIZONA IMMIGRATION LAW, SB1070

WASHINGTON (April 29, 2010) – The new law recently signed by the governor of Arizona, SB 1070, makes it a state crime to violate some federal immigration statutes. While the law is extremely popular in the state, with 70 percent of Arizona voters approving of it and just 23 percent opposed, it has raised controversy. Below is a brief summary of the relevant information on illegal immigration in Arizona, followed by a short analysis of SB 1070’s major provisions.

Illegal immigration in Arizona:
• The federal government estimated that Arizona had one of the fastest growing illegal immigrant populations in the country, increasing from 330,000 in 2000 to 560,000 by 2008.1
• Arizona has adopted other laws to deter the settlement of illegal immigrants in the state in recent years. The federal government estimates that the illegal immigrant population dropped by 18 percent in the state from 2008 to 2009, compared to a 7 percent drop for the nation as a whole.2 This may be evidence that the state enforcement efforts are having an impact.
• The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has found that 22 percent of felonies in the county are committed by illegal immigrants.3 Illegal immigrants are estimated to be 10 percent of the county’s adult population.4
• Analysis of data from State Criminal Alien Assistance Program showed that illegal immigrants were 11 percent of the state’s prison population. Illegal immigrants were estimated to be 8 percent of state’s adult population at the time of the analysis.5
• Approximately 17 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol in its Tucson Sector have criminal records in the United States.6
• The issue of illegal immigration and crime is very difficult to measure, and while in Arizona there is evidence that illegal immigrants are committing a disproportionate share of crime, it is not clear this is the case nationally.7
• In 2007, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that 12 percent of workers in the Arizona are illegal immigrants.8
• In 2007, the Center estimated that illegal immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) comprise one-fifth of those in the state living in poverty, one-third of those without health insurance, and one out of six students in the state’s schools.9
• In 2007, the Center estimated that one-third of households headed by illegal immigrants in Arizona used at least one major welfare program, primarily food-assistance programs or Medicaid. Benefits were typically received on behalf of U.S.-born children.10
• The new law (SB 1070) is extremely popular among Arizona voters. A Rasmussen poll found that 70 percent of voters approve of the new bill, and just 23 percent oppose it.11

Among the new law’s provisions:
• The new Arizona law mirrors federal law, which already requires aliens (non-citizens) to register and carry their documents with them (8 USC 1304(e) and 8 USC 1306(a)). The new Arizona law simply states that violating federal immigration law is now a state crime as well. Because illegal immigrants are by definition in violation of federal immigration laws, they can now be arrested by local law enforcement in Arizona.
• The law is designed to avoid the legal pitfall of “pre-emption,” which means a state can’t adopt laws that conflict with federal laws. By making what is a federal violation also a state violation, the Arizona law avoids this problem.
• The law only allows police to ask about immigration status in the normal course of “lawful contact” with a person, such as a traffic stop or if they have committed a crime.
• Estimates from the federal government indicate that more than 80 percent of illegal immigrants come from Latin America.12 Thus, there is concern that police may target only Hispanics for enforcement.
• Before asking a person about immigration status, law enforcement officials are required by the law to have “reasonable suspicion” that a person is an illegal immigrant. The concept of “reasonable suspicion” is well established by court rulings. Since Arizona does not issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, having a valid license creates a presumption of legal status. Examples of reasonable suspicion include:
• A driver stopped for a traffic violation has no license, or record of a driver’s license or other form of federal or state identification.
• A police officer observes someone buying fraudulent identity documents or crossing the border illegally.
• A police officer recognizes a gang member back on the street who he knows has been previously deported by the federal government.

• The law specifically states that police, “may not solely consider race, color or national origin” when implementing SB 1070.
• When Arizona’s governor signed the new law, she also issued an executive order requiring the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training Board to provide local police with additional training on what does and what does not constitute “reasonable suspicion.”13

# # #

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent non-partisan research institution that examines the impact of immigration on the United States. It is not involved in drafting legislation and has not formally endorsed or opposed SB 1070.

Endnotes

1 See Table 4 “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2008,” http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf.

2 See ‘Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2009,” Table 4, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2009.pdf See also Table 4 “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2008,” http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf.

3 The Maricopa County Attorney’s office report is at: http://www.mcaodocuments.com/press/20081002_a-whitepaper.pdf.

4 See Table 3 in “Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue,” http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantCrime.

5 See Table 6 in “Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue,” http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantCrime.

6 See “The Krentz Bonfire: Will the murder of a respected Cochise County rancher change anything on our border?” Tucson Weekly, April 29, 2010, http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-krentz-bonfire/Content?oid=1945848.

7 The Center for Immigration Studies has conducted a detailed review of the literature and data available on crime. Nationally it is very difficult to come to a clear conclusion about crime rates among immigrants. The report, “Immigration and Crime: Assessing a Conflicted Issue,” is at: http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantCrime.

8 See Tables 21 in “Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population,” http://www.cis.org/immigrants_profile_2007.

9 See Tables 23, 24, and 26 in “Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population,” http://www.cis.org/immigrants_profile_2007.

10 See Tables 25 in “Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population,” http://www.cis.org/immigrants_profile_2007.

11 Rasmussen poll released April 21, 2010, of likely voters in Arizona, http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/arizona/70_of_arizona_voters_favor_new_state_measure_cracking_down_on_illegal_immigration.

12 See ‘Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2009,” Figure 2, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2009.pdf.

13 See http://www.azpost.state.az.us/bulletins/eo201009.pdf.

Update II: Further Financial Centralization (Budding Bureaucracies)

Bush, Business, Democrats, Economy, Federalism, Law, Regulation

Charles Krauthammer points out that BHO’s financial-reform bill is a move toward a further increase in the overweening powers of the Executive branch, which will now be able to seize a firm it designates as systemically risky. Where was Krauthammer during the Bush administration? It invented the doctrine of an overreaching executive. Still, he is right.

Michele Bachmann sums up the impetus of the bill: privatizing profits; socializing losses. (By the way, Bachmann is infinitely superior in intelligence to Palin who’s only growing more ignorant with notoriety. The more I see of Bachmann, the more impressed I grow with her demeanor and unshakable command of the facts.

Here is The Wall Street Journal’s “Factsheet: Senate Financial-Regulation Bill”

Update I (April 27): As Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano has been pointing out, the bogus lawsuit against Goldman-Sachs, a major donor of Obama and the beneficiary of a bailout, is political theater designed to prepare the public for the passage of enormously intrusive financial regulation.

The Heritage Foundation on “The Dodd Bill:

“Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration want to create a permanent bailout mechanism all [the] while spouting their rhetoric of getting tough on Wall Street, but if you look at who is already lining up to support their ‘reform’ measure it’s a who’s who of the big banks that have already received the taxpayer bailout the first time.” … “Wall Street supports this measure. Why? Because big investment houses realize they’ll get bailed out and would have less reason to worry about risky behavior.”

“Sen. Chris Dodd (D.-Conn.) crafted the Senate version of so-called ‘Financial Reform’ with the support of the President. The procedure used to date resembles the non-transparent and secretive tactics used to pass ObamaCare. The Senate Banking committee marked up the bill in 22 minutes, with no amendments offered and no debate allowed. …

“There are two specific problems with the Senate approach to ‘reform.'”:

“First, this legislation would create a new $50-billion bailout slush fund controlled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Very big banks and other ‘eligible financial companies’ would be taxed by the FDIC to build up this fund. As with any tax, though, it’s consumers–you and me–who would eventually pay this levy.

The Obama Administration this weekend requested that the $50 billion pre-funded bailout money be removed from the bill. But according to Foxnews.com, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner advocated last year that any bailout funding should be addressed post bailout through a tax on big Wall Street firms. If Senate Democrats only take out the $50 billion slush fund and leave the bailout authority intact, then the taxpayers will still be on the hook for any future bailouts.

Another problem with this bill is that it would bail out the creditors of companies and wouldn’t require any creditor to take a loss after a company starts to fail. If the bailout slush fund is tapped, the FDIC would have the power to reimburse creditors. That could allow the FDIC to pay creditors more than they invested (pursuant to Section 210 of the Dodd bill).

Think about that. If creditors know they aren’t likely take a loss, and risk has been eliminated from an investment, its taxpayers who are assuming all the risk. Of course, taxpayers get none of the rewards if the investments pay off–we would simply be on the hook if they fail. Taxpayers could expect no reward for having insured transactions and protected wealthy investors from any risk. The AIG bailout is a great example of this model.”

Update II: BUDDING BUREAUCRACIES. Senate Republicans are, so far, blocking debate, and thus a vote, on The Bill, which makes them look like obstructionists to a moronic populace.

Bloomberg:

“Republicans say the bill would set up a permanent bailout of Wall Street banks and create bureaucracies … Dodd’s legislation would create a consumer financial protection bureau at the Federal Reserve with authority to write rules and enforce them at banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets. … The bill would limit the Fed’s regulatory authority to banks with assets of at least $50 billion, transferring its powers to monitor smaller lenders to other regulators. It would also set up a council of regulators to monitor the economy for systemic risk and ban proprietary trading at U.S. banks.”

What pigs do with power ….

Update IV: Mining Men

Business, Gender, Labor, Law, Regulation

The Upper Big Branch South Mine near Montcoal, W.Va., is where “a methane explosion killed 25 miners and left four more missing and thought dead. The mine, operated by a subsidiary of Massey Energy Co., had been cited for several violations relating to proper ventilation.” This is “the worst mining disaster in over 20 years,” reports the Hill.

A suspect source, the United Mine Workers, “said that the mine had been the subject of 450 safety violations and that the company has paid over $1 million in fines last year.”

Regulation generally works to the detriment of those it is intended to help, since a less-than-honorable company will find the fine cheaper than the fixes needed to bring the mine up to par.

Update I (April 6): Coal-mining accidents always remind me—but not other media member, it seems—that men do society’s most dangerous jobs. Poor men, especially, go underground to make a living; have done so for generations.
Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 classic How Green Was My Valley (your children should have read it) depicts this reality in an achingly beautiful way. The book haunted me for years after I had read it, as a kid. “Margaret’s Museum” achieves a good deal on celluloid.

Update II: The following is from an 1935 article, “The World’s Most Dangerous Jobs.” Since then working conditions have improved for men because of advancement is technology, among other reasons. I also believe that workers in the fishing, timber and electrical power-line fields have overtaken miners as far as death on the job goes:

“‘COME quick! There’s a man hurt!’ Almost ten times every minute, more than 4,000 times each working day, that cry resounds somewhere among America’s great mass of industrial workers.”

“Once every ten minutes that cry means death for another working man. In 1933 it sounded the death knell of 46 men a day. These dying, injured, and maimed men were following ordinary jobs in most cases. They were not stunting aviators, daredevil race drivers, or human flies. Who then has the most dangerous job?”

With an accident frequency rate of 65.28 per million man-hours of exposure, say the Safety Council figures, the coal miner works at the world’s most dangerous job.
There are approximately a million miners in this country. While these men are working just one hour of one working day, more than 65 of them will be injured at their work.
The miner then has the world’s most dangerous job.
Second to mining, is lumbering. This occupation has an accident frequency rate of 59.67 per million man-hours of work. Third in the list of most dangerous occupations is the construction industry with a rate of 55.66.
And what is the safest job? At the top of the list of some thirty industries, accounted for in the figures of the National Safety Council, stands tobacco processing with a frequency rate of only 1.43, the safest occupation in this country!
For many years coal mining has led all other employments in the annual number of fatal and permanent injuries suffered in accidents.

Update III: “Mining Safety Reexamined After Another Deadly Disaster in W.Va.”

Update IV (April 7): What I know about rescue protocol in mining accidents is dangerous, but not nearly as hazardous as the slow speed with which the rescue at the Upper Big Branch Mine is proceeding.

They’ve drilled one hole “to release enough methane gas so searchers can enter the mine.”

How many more holes must they bore before they’ll allow searches to brave the Pit?

Presently they appear to be endlessly testing air samples. Can you imagine the time lost sending samples to the feds? Even if they do it on location, which is what I presume is happening, from the vantage point of the relatives this rescue must looks like a Ninny-State operation.

Maybe the authorities involved have decided it is no longer a rescue, but a recovery operation. How I hope this is not the case.

Poor, poor people. But for the grace…