Monthly Archives: July 2015

Kate’s Law: Smoke and Mirrors

Politicians are nothing if not predictable. Whenever a tragedy occurs they are all too eager to pronounce how their proposed law will ensure such things never happen again. Unfortunately this is never the case. Whatever “law” they have proposed, were it in place at the time of the tragedy, actually would have done nothing to prevent it. For example in the wake of the Newtown Connecticut shootings there were calls to ban “assault rifles” and increase waiting periods. Even if one is inclined to believe such measures can reduce violence they have to admit it would have done nothing to have stopped that particular shooting: no “assault” rifles were used and the perpetrator used the legally acquired weapons owned by mother (whom he killed to get at them). Perhaps a law that makes it illegal to kill someone and take their guns could have prevented that tragedy. Why has no one thought of that yet!

Another recent tragedy has sparked yet another wave of legislative inanity. The tragic death of Kate Steinle this past July in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant (an apparent accidental shooting) has prompted several new proposed laws in Congress, the most prominent one being “Kate’s Law” (of interest: no gun laws are proposed because the weapon used was stolen from a federal agent’s car and subsequently found in the trash by the shooter). This law seeks to increase jail time to a minimum of 5 years for illegal immigrants who re-enter after deportation. The suspect in the case (Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez) is a 5 time deportee. He has been described as a “convicted felon” but the only “felonies” committed are entering the US illegally after being deported as well as some low level non-violent drug offenses. A model citizen he is not, but he’s hardly Tony Montana.

People believe a 5-year sentence would have prevented this tragedy because he was released in March 2015 after having served 4 years for re-entering the US after being deported. So yes, I suppose technically had the 5-year minimum been in place this tragic shooting would not have occurred. But this is just playing games on the margins. Who’s to say had he been released 1 year later that the same thing would not have occurred then? People would be beating their chests for mandatory 6-year sentences! Yes, that will solve it. If extending jail time is an effective method to prevent violent deaths then why not also argue that all convicted felons (irrespective of immigration/citizenship status) have a year added to their sentence? Or two? Or ten? Or perhaps life in jail? There is no logical divide between “Kate’s Law” and a proposal for perpetual jail time as a method to prevent crime.

The real problem here is not the length of the prison sentence but rather a disconnect between the duties of local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement (ICE: Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Legally Francisco should have been deported after his sentence was up, however San Francisco County denied the request to turn him over and he was released. This is where cities like San Francisco get the moniker of “sanctuary cities.” Unsurprisingly such simple labels do not tell the whole story. “Sanctuary cities” as such do not exist (in that they harbor actual violent criminals). Whenever a case involves an actual violent felon all such cities have complied with ICE requests for detention. But violent convicted felons who are also illegal immigrants are quite rare. Most immigrants who find themselves temporarily locked up are guilty of low-level misdemeanors or less. Local authorities simply do not have the manpower, resources or money to cooperate with ICE on every single arrest of someone who may possibly have a questionable immigration status. ICE basically expects local agencies to feed, house, and manage every single person they arrest who might possibly be an illegal immigrant while providing zero monetary compensation for such efforts. This is what is known as an “unfunded mandate.” And if the city does hold someone for ICE for days on end and they turn out to not be an illegal then quite often the city gets sued. Do you think ICE is there to help them defend against that suit? There’s no free lunch. If the Feds want help in enforcing immigration laws they need to pay for that help.

The irony here is that the Federal government poisoned our neighbor’s well and now feigns outrage when those neighbors come here to use our well. The US created this immigration “crisis” through their policies of agricultural subsidies that allow US farmers to dump cheap goods into Latin America. This destroyed those agricultural markets, put their farmers out of work, and ultimately leads to the unemployed looking for work in the US. Interventionism, whether domestic (subsidies) or international, always results in unintended outcomes (blowback). The solution is not more interventionism but to undo the original intervention.

I Don’t Hope

I have a confession to make. I play the lottery. Yes, I understand math implies I have a better chance of being struck by lightning than of winning the jackpot, but it’s only a couple of bucks a week and ultimately somebody has to win, so who knows. I reveal this dark secret in order to set the stage for a demonstration of the ineptitude of government agency running a business: The Georgia Lottery Commission. Although to be fair it would appear the Georgia Legislature had an equal hand in the stupidity I am about to reveal.

A few years ago the GLC actually did something beneficial for their customers, they added the ability to buy lottery tickets on line. You can buy nearly everything else on line, why not lottery tickets? The process itself was a bit convoluted, you couldn’t just pay with a credit card or Paypal, you had to open a pseudo-Discover debit card called the “iHope Card” that you had to first fund from a bank account before you could play. However the card acted like a debit card so you could in theory get at your money whenever you needed it. More on that later.

In the beginning the process worked well. Every 3 months I’d buy 26 draws of the same number and then not think about it for another 3 months. Click and forget, very easy. Occasionally if jackpots got huge I might pick up a few more tickets from the comfort of home. Unfortunately that has all ended. In the past few months either a new law was passed or the GLC simply got around to enforcing an existing law. The upshot is that one must now be physically located in the state of Georgia to buy a Georgia lottery ticket. This is where we enter the Twilight Zone. Only government would craft its business model around the ideal of striving toward FEWER sales and LESS revenue by artificially restricting its customer base. I thought the revenue raised by the lottery was for funding in-state education. If people in other states want to send money to Georgia voluntarily to help educate children here, exactly what is the problem with that?

In any event, in order to ensure this asinine edict is upheld the GLC implemented a new software check that attempts to determine one’s computer location based on a combination of IP address and local Wi-Fi networks. Sounds simple enough to the uninitiated, but for those who work in IT like myself it is evident that such an approach will be fraught with false negatives. I know because I was caught up in their net and became intimately familiar with the methods they are using. One must have two (or possibly many more, they really don’t know) Wi-Fi networks nearby (this cuts out anyone not living in a dense urban environment). Likewise, one can’t be running the Mac OS because the GLC software mistakes a core function of OS X (Remote Management) as something that might interfere in location determination (it can’t). The GLC even laughably suggests one buy a Wi-Fi extender to find more networks – that’s like suggesting one buy stronger binoculars to see better in the dark. GLC’s new motto: It is better that a thousand Georgians be inconvenienced than for one Alabaman near the border to buy a lotto ticket. Brilliant.

The second act in this drama gets even more interesting (all lawyers pay close attention to this one). Seeing as how I could not use my account to buy tickets on line anymore, I opted to transfer funds back to my bank account and close the iHope account. Alas, I soon discovered you are only allowed to transfer WINNINGS out of an iHope account to a bank account (this fact confirmed by calling support when I was unable to transfer all funds). Any money that you originally transferred to it from a bank account cannot subsequently be transferred back. So what’s the problem? Well, first, that is an idiotic artificial limitation, but secondly, that information is not disclosed anywhere. I scoured the account agreement (where it should have been) and do not see any mention of this fact. Astoundingly enough their website FAQ clearly contradicts their policy by stating that

 

“CAN I TRANSFER MY WINNINGS FROM MY IHOPECARD ACCOUNT TO MY BANK ACCOUNT? Yes. Transfer your winnings, or any funds originating from your bank account, to your registered bank account.”

 

Repeated attempts to inform their tech support their FAQ was wrong resulted only them parroting the FAQ back to me. I would characterize this blatant omission and ongoing contradiction of a material fact regarding how the iHope account functions as fraud. Any interested class action attorneys – I will leave you to it.

Symbols

Shortly after the horrific Charleston church shooting an arrest was made of the execrable Dylann Roof. The media quickly set about digging into his social media resumé (as it were) and soon discovered photos where he is either posing with a Confederate flag or paying homage to the former flag of apartheid era South Africa. This man-child monster was a hater. He posed with things that (in his mind) were a reflection of hatred. Upon tasting something vile or bitter you immediately spit it out; that was the same reaction society had to everything (well, not Gold’s Gym) associated pictographically with this person (and I use the term “person” loosely).

There not being any strong historical connection in the American psyche with apartheid era flags attention naturally turned to the Confederate flag (or more properly the Confederate “battle flag”  – the actual national flag of the Confederacy resembled America’s revolutionary flag). For simplicity I will refer to it as “the flag.” This flag (until recently) flew in numerous places all across the American south, from both government property and private property. National attention quickly turned focus on this fact and demands were made that these flags be removed — permanently. If ever proof were needed that this flag was a symbol of hate we certainly had it now given Dylan Roof’s deployment of it as a backdrop to his angry-white-trash-loner memes.

As a white man with no cultural connection to the American south (as close as one can get to neutrality on this issue) I’ll offer my perspective. On the one hand, I have friends who I believe are truly sincere when they say for them the flag is not a symbol of hate, that it is a reminder of their heritage, in the same way immigrants might cleave to cultural symbology of “the old country”. For others it is a way to honor their direct ancestors who sacrificed their lives to protect their family from attack. These people are not closet racists just looking for a pretext to trot out passive-aggressive symbols of racism. But – I can see where the other side is coming from. After all, this flag WAS the battle emblem of a nation founded upon the principal that it is perfectly acceptable for one man to own another. Yes, secession was the result of many differences between the south and the Federal government but that doesn’t change the fact that the Confederate States of America’s constitution explicitly protected the practice of slavery. Saying the CSA was about much more than slavery, it was about a way of life, about state’s rights, etc. is all well and good, but that’s like a progressive/socialist arguing that the swastika should not offend anyone because Nazi Germany was about much more than just killing Jews… it was about deploying state programs to put people to work, swelling national pride behind a unified purpose of German greatness, and keeping people safe by outlawing private gun ownership – if but for the Holocaust that Hitler guy wasn’t so bad! (for the tone-deaf, this is sarcasm to make a point)

So to my southern friends I say this: yes, you have the right to display any symbol of your heritage you want, but you can’t feign ignorance about why some people might be offended or upset by it – the CSA’s pro-slavery stance has pooped in the punch bowl that is serving up symbols of your heritage. Sorry – feel free to commiserate with Hindus or Buddhists who had their beloved swastika ruined by the Nazi’s.

To all those that clamored, petitioned, and finally achieved the removal of the flag from state government grounds – congratulations. But now please stop. You’ve won. The movement is now getting ridiculous. People are calling for buildings, roads, and other public spaces to be renamed because they are named after someone who was openly racist, or who might have been racist, or who watched something racist on TV. People are even calling to have the corpses of former Confederate generals and soldiers dug up and removed from state-run grounds. People are also calling for the removal of the Jefferson Memorial because Jefferson owned slaves. Thomas Jefferson! They have a term for this: cultural genocide.

If the general rule used for honoring the dead is that that person never did or said anything bad or that might offend the sensibilities of someone in the future, well then I guess only saints need apply. Who shall cast the first stone? I dare say everyone who has done something memorable or praiseworthy also has had their share of dark moments. Let sleeping dogs lie and move on. You can’t change the past. It is equally important to recall the bad and the good in people – as the saying goes, if we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.

I’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday – Not!

Jimmy enjoyed life. To more fully enjoy it Jimmy needed some money. Jimmy could have worked and saved and worked and saved – but that takes too long. Jimmy wanted to enjoy life NOW. So Jimmy borrowed money from Bob and promised to repay it later – he was a young man; he had plenty of time to pay it back. But Jimmy quickly burned through that loan and was unwilling to suffer the indignation of giving up his carefree lifestyle. So he asked to borrow some more – and he was given more, but at a higher interest rate that reflected Bob’s growing uncertainty about Jimmy’s ability to pay him back. This cycle continued for a while until the interest rate got high enough that Jimmy started to borrow less and less. Then came along Jimmy’s wealthier, older brother Timmy who agreed to co-sign all future loans with Jimmy. Knowing how wealthy Timmy was, Bob felt a lot better about his prospects for getting repaid, so he agreed to a lower interest rate. With this new found credit-worthiness Jimmy went on a binge of borrowing that vastly exceeded what he had done up to that point. This cycle of new Timmy-guaranteed loans continued until one day Timmy said “no more.” To help his brother out Timmy convinced Bob (owing to their strong business relationship) to take a “haircut” on the outstanding loans (that is, write down the amount owed) if Jimmy promised to get his financial affairs in order. Jimmy agreed and Bob complied. But after only a few years Jimmy was back to his old borrow and spend ways and Timmy and Bob had had enough. No more loans until Jimmy paid his loans on time. Jimmy was capable of doing this, but only by drastically cutting back his expenditures. Predictably Jimmy balked. He insisted he would not pay back anything unless Bob once again took a “haircut” and gave him more time to repay. The moral of the story? Don’t live beyond your means by borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today’s luxuries. Also, don’t lend money to those that obviously are unable or unwilling to repay it. This advice applies equally to individuals as well as to countries.

For those unfamiliar with the details of the current Greek debt crisis this little tale above illustrates in the abstract how Greece has behaved over the years. All the details are true, only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Jimmy is Greece (Jimmy the Greek, get it?), Bob represents all those banks that have lent money to the Greek government over the years, first by buying Drachma based bonds and now EU-based Greek debt, and lastly, Timmy represents the EU itself. After the Euro was fully adopted in 2002 in the EU all member nations retired their national currency in favor of the Euro. The economically more productive countries imbued the Euro with a fiscal resilience that the economically weaker countries (such as Greece) have exploited. Like a reckless teenager using daddy’s credit card, under the Euro regime Greece has been able to borrow more and at a better rate than they ever could have under their Drachma.

Some have suggested if only the EU were more like the US Greece would not be in this bind. In the US the wealthy states subsidize the poorer states via federalized tax transfers (Social Security, welfare, infrastructure projects etc) without the poorer states “owing” anything. That, however, is in invalid comparison. Those are federal programs forced upon all the states. Greece is not in financial straights because of EU mandates. Greece is in trouble because of its own internal government spending. A more apt comparison would be the looming pension crisis in US states (e.g. California, Illinois, New Jersey, etc) where the governments of those states made promises to public worker retirees that are impossible to keep. Citizens of Georgia will be no more interested in bailing out Californian public sector pensioners than are citizens of Germany interested in bailing out a similarly profligate Greece. The pattern is universal in democracy: a gullible public showers with the most votes those politicians who promises them financial security with one hand by robbing their children’s piggy bank with the other.

Although we rubbernecking Americans may feel secure atop the perch of our SUV-sized economy while we idle past the spectacle of Keynesian-influenced deficit spending and Socialism that is Greece, our time is coming. When debt is measured in relation to a country’s tax revenue (that is, the ability to repay it) the US comes in third  – right behind Japan… and Greece. Be afraid. Be very afraid.