Pass a bill -- any bill!

The Capitol Hill fight between the House and Senate (actually, I should say "among" the House, Senate, and White House) over the various immigration bills currently under consideration is a perfect illustration of why I say a do-nothing government would be better than the one we have.

On issue after issue, legislators feel that their job is to pass something, anything that will convince voters that they've "addressed" a particular issue. What we end up with is a law code the size of a Manhattan phone book, that still does not do much to improve the state of our society.

The Houston Chronicle notes that "Republicans are feeling the political heat to finish an immigration bill before the November election." Not wanting to be left out, the Democrats and the White House are also feeling some heat on the same issue. Pick up the paper, and Congressman after Congressman, and Senator after Senator, keeps saying, "My constituents are telling me that we need to pass a bill before we go home."

The problem is that all of these bills stink. I have yet to see a proposal that will actually accomplish anything, in terms of changing the status quo on illegal immigration. A new fence won't do it -- people who want to get in will still find ways in. They'll cut holes in, climb over, burrow under, or pay people to take them around any fence we build along the Mexican border. A convoluted process to allow illegal immigrants to gain citizenship won't accomplish much, either -- as I've argued before, I think most employers and workers won't participate unless you can show them a clear benefit from doing so. Telling illegal workers to go home? That's so ridiculous as to need no discussion.

But this is typical of how Congress operates these days. (And by "Congress," I mean essentially any governing body -- state legislatures, county boards of supervisors, and city councils are not exempt from my condemnation, nor are individual officials.) They see a problem, they pass a bill. The bill doesn't fix the problem, so they pass another one. And another, and another, ad infinitum.

What few seem to grasp -- and talk about your blinding flashes of the obvious -- is that we cannot govern our way to perfection. The world is imperfect. Many times, legislative attempts to make it better only increase the cost -- of living, of doing business, of everything -- while not fixing the problem they were intended to fix.

This is why I voted a mostly-Libertarian ticket in the last election. It's not really that I'm that much of a free-market, laissez-faire person in principle -- it's more that the quality of our government, its competence, has reached such a low level that on many issues, it would be better to do nothing and let society muddle through. Really -- "I'm from Washington, and I'm here to help" is not what we need to hear right now. Legislators, don't touch anything -- you'll just break it.

Urb's Blog

What will they think of next?

For decades, the environmental movement has had an underlying socio-political backdrop. Basically, what it amounts to is that they can't stand the big cars, suburbs, consumer products, agribusiness, and overall consumption level of post-war America (and the industrial world generally). So they keep coming up with "crises" that threaten the destruction of the world as we know it, unless we change our ways.

And every time the "crisis" is averted -- or overcome through technology and, in some cases, corrective legislation -- the greens are back to square one and have to come up with another impending "crisis," in another attempt to shut down what they perceive as the excesses of an affluent economy.

In the 1960s, it was the Silent Spring movement, an effort to ban pesticides in response to the book of that name. Pesticides were (and are) a legitimate problem, and in reaction to the environmental damage they were causing, government and industry made great strides to fix the problem. Crisis averted.

In the 1970s, it was the "energy crisis." A combination of misguided government policies led to oil and gasoline shortages, as well as stagflation. This was supposed to herald "the end of cheap energy," and we were all going to have to stop burning gas, end suburban sprawl, and generally mend our wasteful ways. As it turned out, high oil prices spurred exploration, and Washington bribed Saudi Arabia (with military sales) to pump more oil and undercut its OPEC allies. Once again, crisis averted -- and greens frustrated, as their predictions of doom once again failed to come true.

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, they're all hot and bothered about "global warming." Finally, they think, we face a crisis that we can't clean, drill, and bribe our way out of. Presumably, there is no way to cut down on our profligate carbon dioxide emissions -- which, they claim, are causing the Earth to heat up in ways that will have disastrous consequences for civilization and ecology.

I've written enough skeptical pieces on global warming that I'm not going to address that subject today -- who wants to sound like Urbie One Note? Also, I reiterate that, as an old geography major, I do not dismiss the idea of global warming entirely. It is certainly possible that human CO2 emissions are affecting global climate; the evidence is not nearly as clear as Al Gore and his crowd have convinced the general public it is -- but the idea that we are causing some warming cannot be ruled out.

However, much as it pains me to say this, the greens may be mistaken in the idea that they've finally found the key to shutting down industial society. That's because once again, the capitalist market economy is smarter than they think. There may, indeed, be ways to cut down our CO2 emissions without driving less. Exhibit A: a new Volkswagen engine that incorporates both a supercharger and a turbocharger. (For those not mechanically inclined, a supercharger is a blower connected to the crankshaft of an engine via a belt, much like a fan belt, that forces more fuel-air mixture into the cylinders than would get in naturally because of air pressure. A turbocharger is a similar device, but instead of working off the crankshaft, it uses exhaust gas flow to drive the blower.) According to Car & Driver, the 1390-cc VW "twincharger" engine is able to put out as much horsepower (around 170 bhp at 6000 RPM) as a much larger engine but with lower CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.

Another way of cutting down CO2 emissions -- albeit one that, for now, is less attractive for other reasons -- is to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. When President Bush touts the benefits of ethanol, he's just blowing smoke, for the most part, and trying to deflect public hostility derived from his coziness with the oil industry -- but ethanol does point the way to another method of decreasing our CO2 output. There are many economic and logistical problems to be addressed, but the energy industry is spending a lot of R&D money working on it.

Neither of these ideas is going to result in a huge reduction in CO2 emissions overnight, but they suggest that the green dream of abolishing capitalism through environmental "crisis" simply is not going to come true. They can come up with one crisis after another -- but each time, we figure out a way to answer their gripes while keeping the economy going. Once the auto and power industries figure out how to make cars and power plants that don't put out much CO2, the enviros will have to come up with something else to complain about. Wonder what it'll be?

Urb's Blog

Arrogant execs get comeuppance

So Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are busted. Here's hoping they get an extended stay at Club Fed when their sentencing date (September 11th, just to make sure they have a bad day) rolls around.

What kills me is that they and their high-priced legal team rested their hopes on the defense that Enron was a sound company brought down, somehow, by a wave of short-selling and some hostile reporting from the Wall St. Journal. If you're running a sound business that's moving product and making money, exactly how much damage can short sellers and bad press do? Can they cause customers to stop buying what you make? Can they cause your bank account to disappear?

I'd say Ken and Jeff underestimated the intelligence of a jury of their peers. One can only hope that other executives are paying attention.

Urb's Blog

Clueless Congress, Part II

Further evidence that our elected representatives in Washington are off their collective rocker can be found in the immigration bill just passed by the Senate, which will be ineffective and probably counterproductive. (The bill, that is, not the Senate -- although "ineffective" and "counterproductive" aren't bad ways of describing the latter.)

The New York Times offers this description of the bill:

Under the Senate agreement, illegal immigrants who have lived in the United States for five years or more, about seven million people, would eventually be granted citizenship if they remained employed, passed background checks, paid fines and back taxes, and enrolled in English classes.

Illegal immigrants who have lived here two to five years, about three million people, would have to leave the country briefly and receive a temporary work visa before returning, as a guest worker. Over time, they would be allowed to apply for permanent residency and ultimately citizenship.

Illegal immigrants who have been here less than two years, about one million people, would be required to leave the country altogether. They could apply for the guest worker program, but they would not be guaranteed acceptance in it.

The legislation would also require employers to use a new employment verification system that would distinguish between legal and illegal workers. In addition, it would impose stiff fines for violations by employers, create legal-immigrant documents resistant to counterfeiting, increase the number of Border Patrol agents and mandate other enforcement measures.

Consider what this is saying. If you've been in this country for five years -- presumably, this means you're pretty well established in the American economy -- you get to apply for citizenship, which, according to news reports, will take about 11 years to be approved. Well, so what? What difference is it going to make, either for the country or for the immigrant individual, if the latter becomes a citizen or not? In some abstract sense, it might make people feel better -- but in terms of substance, I can't see the difference. My first consulting client, back in 1991, was a Swiss national who had become a very successful businessman in this country and abroad, but had found there was no need to become an American citizen. Why should a Mexican laborer think differently?

As for the people here less than five years, who will be "required" (I say that in quotes, because in order to be required to do anything, they first have to be identified) to go home "briefly" and apply for a work visa, or if here less than two years, have to go home for good... well, who's going to own up to that? People who are here illegally in the first place are, by definition, lacking verified documentation of when they came in. When the INS raids a workplace to try and identify illegal aliens, they're all going to say, "Oh, sí, I've been here for more than five years, so I get to stay, ¿no?" How many, I ask you, are going to admit to being recent arrivals and thus subject to being kicked out of the country?

This whole bill is just political grandstanding. It will accomplish nothing -- there may be a few longtime foreign workers who will sign up for citizenship, but overall, it won't have any effect on the inflow of workers across the border.

Which, as I've argued before, is really not such a bad thing. Our economy is telling us that it needs more low-end labor. We need people to pick vegetables -- and also to mow lawns, build houses, and do all kinds of other manual-labor tasks. This is exactly what happened 100 years ago, when people like my grandparents found they were having trouble making ends meet in Greece and came here to make a life for themselves -- and to help build the American economy into the powerhouse it is today.

Urb's Blog

Clueless Congress

Last Thursday, the US House of Representatives voted to continue a quarter-century-old ban on oil and natural gas drilling in roughly 85% of the country's coastal waters from Alaska to New England.

This is the same Congress that, in recent weeks, has been throwing a temper tantrum over the price of gasoline, accusing oil companies of "price gouging," and proposing all kinds of stupid legislative ideas that would end up making gas prices go higher, not lower (or, in the case of price controls, would lead to shortages like we had in the '70s).

If we're going to "do something" about the price of gas, someone needs to make some tough choices here. Either allow the oil companies to increase the supply, or stop using so much gas. It has to be one or the other.

By continuing the ban on offshore drilling, Congress has told us in no uncertain terms that it has no intention of increasing the supply of gas. Well, they're not likely to do anything to decrease the demand, either. So we're left with no action, and with $3.00 gas.

This is not in itself a bad thing. The price of gas is exactly where it should be -- where the supply and demand curves meet. But the next time you see your Congressman grandstanding on TV, fulminating about "price gouging" and conspiracy theories, remember all the roadblocks Congress puts in the way of allowing the oil industry to do what it would like to do -- namely, meet the demand for its products that we consumers exhibit every day.

Urb's Blog

Internship in progress!

I have begun my accounting internship at a small law firm in Flagstaff. Why an accounting internship at a law firm?, I hear you asking. Well, it turns out that there's a lot of number-crunching to be done there, as in any corporation. This was my first week on the job, and I jumped right in, doing some bank reconciliations and getting up to speed on the software they use to track... pretty much whatever goes on in the business, both in terms of practice and on the accounting end.

On Thursday, grades were posted for spring classes, and I am happy to report that I made it through the semester with an A and two Bs -- the latter included Accounting 455, which regular readers will recall had caused me no end of travail through the '05-06 academic year. In any case, it's over and done with, as are all the other requirements for my degree except the internship and my "capstone" strategic management class, which will run from June 5th until July 3rd.

Urb's Blog

Jazz musicians: look in the mirror!

A frequent lament among jazz musicians these days is that people aren't attending their performances. There's a pervasive attitude that if they can't find an audience, it's someone else's fault. Generally, they place the blame on the recording industry (for placing too much emphasis on big-bucks pop stars), the public schools (for not teaching enough music), or the government (for not spending enough money on subsidies for the arts).

I say the problem -- if it is indeed a problem -- lies with the artists themselves. Jazz -- never a very popular art form to begin with, or at least not in the past 60 years -- has become an abstract, irrelevant art form, or at least one that thumbs its nose at the idea that it should try to appeal to people who are not musicians themselves. You've either got free jazz (so-called because no one will pay you to play it) or obsolete jazz that merely rehashes music from 1959. Why should people go out to hear either one of those? As I discussed in my column on Henry Pleasants awhile back, if you stop caring whether your music appeals to listeners... well, pretty soon, you're not going to have any listeners!

This isn't to say that there aren't still a lot of great jazz musicians out there, playing great music. The common thread among these musicians is that their music can be appreciated or understood at more than one level -- they appeal to the musician and non-musician alike.

But complaints about the lack of a jazz audience are a mere cop-out. If you're not drawing a crowd, maybe that means you're not playing the right kind of music. Much as it pains me to have to state the obvious, jazz is not the only kind of good music out there. So if jazz isn't drawing a crowd, go play something else. At the risk of repeating myself, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and other bluegrass-derived musicians play to full houses of enthusiastic fans. The stuff they play isn't watered-down popular music, either -- it's technical, advanced music that also happens to be listenable.

If jazz musicians can't make their music listenable, it's their own fault. The solution to the problem isn't more money thrown at music education (although that would be a good thing), nor is it to tear down the recording industry, nor is it to increase government arts funding. The solution is to find ways to make good music that people are interested in hearing.

What language barrier?

With all the bluster about immigration, legal and illegal, in Washington these days, and the need to "reform" the process of becoming an American, it's hard to decide which proposal is the worst. But my personal favorite is the idea that immigrants should be required to learn English in order to be allowed to live and work here.

Of all the politically correct orthodoxy we have, the most correct seems to be the idea that you have to be fluent in English to be successful in this country. This is simple ignorance of our country's history.

My grandparents came over from Greece in the early 20th century. My grandfather was literate in Greek, and with some effort, learned to read, write, and speak English fairly well. My grandmother, who had not learned how to read in Greece, never became very fluent in English (and as she got old, she forgot a lot of the English she had once known, as far as I could tell), nor was she able to read very well. But this in no way impeded her ability to become a functioning, productive member of American society. She raised six kids, worked in one capacity or another as needed, and basically lived the American Dream as a first-generation immigrant.

This is typical of the pattern in immigrant families; the first generation speak their native language, while their descendants grow up as English-speaking Americans. So why should the 21st century be any different from the 20th, in this regard? If today's immigrants are fluent in some other language (say, Spanish), why is it such a big deal that they learn English? Past generations of immigrants simply have not found the language barrier a significant problem.

I say the English-for-the-immigrants fatwa is nothing but racism and xenophobia. If Mexicans can come here, work productively as part of our economy, and function perfectly well using Spanish, ¿what's the problem? Why is it any different from the situation with Chinese, Polish, or Greek immigrants of earlier eras?

Urb's Blog

Changing the way Al-Q talks to the world

The most idiotic thing about the whole NSA phone-records scandal is one that I haven't seen covered at all in the mainstream press. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Bush Administration has probably been spying on us for some time -- and if you're as smart as our friends at Al-Qaeda undoubtedly are, they didn't wait until USA Today broke the story to assume that their phone calls were probably being tracked. No, that's not the idiotic part. The idiotic part is that all the landline and cell phone records in the world are not going to help identify terrorist activity.

In all likelihood, Osama Bin Laden and his friends are not now, and have not been for some time, using the regular phone system. The phone records turned over to the NSA probably don't contain anything useful in the way of terrorist-tracking data.

I have three cousins, sisters who live in far-flung parts of the world. One lives here in the continental U.S., a second lives in Guam, and the third one lives in Norway. You'd think this would mean they'd rack up huge phone bills, staying in touch with each other on a daily basis. But these days, not so -- they've all got phone numbers on an Internet phone service like Vonage or Skype, which allows them to talk as much as they want without being charged for the time.

But what's more important is that it also allows them to have phone numbers in any area code they want -- I'm not sure how they've got it set up, but I think they all have numbers in the 617 area code (Boston), because most of our extended family lives in that area.

So what happens if George Bush's snoops look up these phone records for calls between Guam, the U.S., and Norway? All they see is a whole bunch of calls that appear to be from one Boston phone to another.

My guess is that Al-Qaeda is doing the same thing. So when you hear George say that "We're using data-mining techniques to identify patterns of calls, find out when there are a lot of calls between the U.S. and Pakistan," etc., don't believe them. If a terrorist in this country calls one in Pakistan, it's going to show up in the phone records as looking like a call from Boston to Boston, or from Austin to Austin (if I were a terrorist, I'd get a phone number in Texas, just to stick it to the White House).

This whole privacy-invading, data-mining fishing expedition by the Bush Administration isn't just illegal. It's also a big waste of time and money, and it isn't going to turn up anything useful. Because the bad guys aren't using the regular phone system to begin with.

urbie

Onward and upward!

(Note: My regular blog is not working for the time being, because the Web hosting provider changed the name of a server without telling us, thereby breaking some scripts that we can't figure out how to fix for the time being. Until we get that sorted out, I'm using this space... ed.)

I am happy to report that the spring semester has finally come to a close, and that I survived intact. My rematch with Accounting 455 ("Live from Caesar's Palace, it's Kafalas-Wilburn II: This Time, We're Serious. $39.95 ONLY ON DIRECTV PAY-PER-VIEW!) turned out to be a success in the end, as I managed a B -- and I've never been so proud of a B in my academic life!

So that's done. All that's left is a summer "capstone" business-management class and a tax internship at a local law firm, and it'll be time to tune up the orchestra for Pomp & Circumstance March #2. Well, metaphorically at least -- NAU doesn't do anything in the way of ceremony for students who graduate in the summer. Or, that is, they do -- but what they do is let you put on the cap 'n gown and walk in the spring commencement exercises, which were held this weekend. Maybe I'm getting superstitious in my old age, but I felt it would be bad luck to commence before I was actually finished with the degree, so I passed on the spring exercises.

But in any case, we're getting close to the ultimate finish line, as far as NAU business school is concerned.