Clearing the tabs…12/30/2012

Secretary of State Clinton hospitalized. I guess it turned out to be more than “Benghazi flu” after all… Prayers for Secretary Clinton and her health.

How to prepare financially for 2013 despite fiscal cliff. Step one: Don’t panic. Step 2: Prepare for the worst. That’s when I panic. Step 3: Turn investments into cash…Yeah, right.

Farmer cites religious issues in raw milk case. May be behind a “pay wall.” Sorry.

Immigration reform could get overshadowed in Congress. By what? Oh….yeah…forgot.

Red-light cameras run up $7.6 million in fines in first year. Look for this revenue stream to come to a community near you soon.

French court throws out Hollande’s tax on rich. America should be so lucky.

And last but certainly not least, Obama signs FISA warrantless wiretapping program extension into law. It’s nice to know that while the government might not be able to pay its bills, it will still be able to spy on its citizens. Kohl, Johnson and Sensenbrenner all voted “Yes.”

Ray Stevens – “Come to the U.S.A.”

OK, I’ll have more to say later, but I couldn’t resist this:

(A tip of the conservative ball cap to All American Blogger)

Quote of the Day 05-20-2010

“Under Canadian immigration laws, individuals who are not Canadian citizens may be detained at the border and, in certain cases may not be permitted to enter Canada at all, if they have any sort of past criminal record.”

via Memo: MLB Players Have Been Detained at Canadian Border Due to Past Crimes.

(a tip of the conservative ball cap to a tweet by baseballcrank)

Quick Hits 11/14/2008

Here’s more stuff I wanted to blog on but didn’t get to this week.

Chris Lufter was an able leader of the Waukesha Taxpayers League. It will be impossible to replace her. Hopefully she gets to enjoy her family now.

Remember how after the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis collapse, many shrilly indicted the infrastructure. I’m not saying everything’s rosy but, Federal investigators say design error, too much weight doomed I-35W bridge.

Holding the first of a two-day hearing before it releases final findings and recommendations, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday the collapse in Minneapolis was caused by a fatal design error. The error allowed an accumulation of weight added to the bridge over its 40-year lifespan — plus the weight associated with a new construction project — to finally topple it, killing 13 and injuring 145. [Emphasis mine.]

H-1B Visa Reform Takes Shape to Address Fraud, Procedural Nightmares

The agency responsible for granting H-1B visa applications plans to tighten up its procedures for vetting and approving the applications in the wake of a report indicating as many as 20 percent of the applications may be fraudulent or technically flawed.

Immigration needs to be fixed. Soon.

This story by Dan Shelley, former news director of WTMJ radio, sounds like the sour grapes we’ve heard from former Bush Adminstration officials (Scott MacClellan, I’m looking at you). Here’s a response from Charlie Sykes that Milwaukee Magazine should have offered before it ran an obvious hit piece.

If the Fairness Doctrine makes a comeback like Chuck Schumer and many on the left wish, although some say it won’t happen, will conservatives get equal time with The Washington Post and MSDNC’s Chris “My Job Is To Make Obama Presidency a Success” Matthews and Keith Olbermann?

Where have the illegal immigrants gone?

From the Chicago Tribune, via The Week magazine,

Oklahoma’s new law, which cuts off undocumented immigrants from most government programs and mandates felony charges against anyone who transports or shelters them, has emerged as Exhibit A in the struggle.

Three months after the law took effect Nov. 1, anecdotal indications are mounting that many of Oklahoma’s estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have fled the state. But so are indications that the new law is triggering unforeseen consequences.

Catch that? “Unforseen consequences.” Wonder what they might be?

The splintered trees, downed branches and piles of wood still littering nearly every neighborhood of this sprawling city two months after a devastating ice storm stand as a testament to something more than the ferocity of nature.

The debris is also a sign of the effectiveness of Oklahoma’s new law intended to drive illegal immigrants out of the state — the strictest such statute in the nation.

The branches are still here, many of the law’s critics say, because the undocumented workers who would have cleaned them up are not.

“You really have to work hard at it to destroy our state’s economy, but we found a way,” said state Sen. Harry Coates, the only Republican in the state Legislature to vote against the immigration law. “We ran off the workforce.”

Rut roh.

Construction companies that relied on undocumented laborers are having trouble completing jobs. Thousands of undocumented children have been dropped from the state’s Medicaid program. And business is down sharply at the stores, groceries and restaurants that serve a Hispanic clientele.

More rut roh. Or is it?

“The state of Oklahoma ought not be in the business of subsidizing the presence of people who are here illegally,” said Republican state Rep. Randy Terrill, sponsor of the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, also known as House Bill 1804.

He’s got a point.

But is this what we want?

Immigration – the next 50 years

The title on the email I received from Pew Hispanic Center made me say, “D’uh”

Immigration to Play Lead Role in U.S Population Growth from 2005 to 2050, Pew Research Study Finds.

If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants, according to new projections developed by the Pew Research Center.

Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.

Now if they told us how many would be illegal immigrants that might really help, but, alas they don’t. Although they do say,

Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.

Doesn’t help much, does it? With my interest in finding out how much of this projection will be illegal immigration. So I tried here, specifically this article. It was still hard to find (Try pressing Ctrl-F and Typing “Legal vs. Illegal Immigration”).

[A]ssuming net illegal immigration continues at 450,000 a year, Table 1 [Scroll up the page for this] indicates that it would add 13.4 million to the population by 2030 and 37.9 million by 2060. For legal immigration, one can use the net figure of 800,000 found in the table. Legal immigration of 800,000 a year will add 23.9 and 67.4 million to the population by 2030 and 2060, respectively. Of course, the racial composition of legal and illegal immigration differs somewhat and this matters because birth and death rates vary by race. Thus, dividing up legal and illegal immigration in this way can provide only a rough indication of the impact of the two types of immigration.

Table 4 in the report (Scroll down a bit) gives details for all illegal immigrants remaining, half departing and not returning and all departing and not returning.

One thing you rarely, if ever, see discussed on blogs like The Political Environment and Sprawled Out is the discussion of how immigration enters into urban sprawl. Does it have any effect? Who knows, but these people are going to have to live somewhere.

The other interesting factoid, which doesn’t have any bearing on this post,

The Center’s report includes an analysis of the nation’s future “dependency ratio”–the number of children and elderly compared with the number of working age Americans. There were 59 children and elderly people per 100 adults of working age in 2005. That will rise to 72 dependents per 100 adults of working age in 2050.

So 28% of the population will be working for the other 72% by 2050.