South Of Heaven

The bailout was a success!

Kinda. General Motors took that bailout money and invested in factories in China.

General Motors Co. sold more vehicles in China than it did in the U.S. last year, marking the first time a foreign market has outpaced the automaker's domestic sales in its 102-year history.

"This is the wave of the future," said George Magliano, an economist at IHS Automotive. "The Chinese market is going to grow faster than the U.S., and it will continue to be this way."

GM's sales in China rose 28.8% last year to 2,351,610 vehicles, GM said Monday. U.S. sales rose just 6.3% to 2,215,227, in part because of the slow economy and GM's closure or sale of the Saturn, Pontiac, Hummer and Saab brands as part of its financial restructuring.

So now that they cut jobs here, how much of General Motors' profits are recirculating in the U.S.?

Professional wrestling and Congress

When I say that politics in America today are like professional wrestling, this is what I meant.

This week even D.C insider Matt Stoller, former policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, has gone public with the theme in a comment he posted at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog.  What he said is not uncommon, but as Yves points out, it’s important because he’s a well-known D.C. insider.

Citing Jimmy Carter’s administration as the beginning of Democratic elites ‘financializing the economy’ and ‘breaking public sector unions’ (deregulating the airline industry), Stoller continues:

“Obama continues this trend. It isn’t that he’s not fighting; he fights like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama flirted with Bernie’s potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants policies that cement the status of a[n] aristocratic class, with crumbs for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.

There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals want to talk about. It’s a good strategy, it’s just you are the one the strategy is being played on.

A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.” [snip]  (bold mine)

GeorgeWashington’s blog yesterday repeated Bernanke’s statement that the Fed will not help failing states and cities with loans, while continuing to throw massive amounts of money at the Big Banks, both overtly and covertly.  The list and amounts add up to an obscenity.

What would be nice would be to find people on the Right who actually understand what is actually happening. But they don't. The Right is effectively under the spell of magical thinking. One could point to the "trickle-down" theory of economics as a shift in political thinking that has undermined the logic of the Right. And it's true that much of the shift of the nation's wealth to the wealthiest has required increasing magical thinking in order to justify the status quo. More scapegoats are needed. People of color. Sexual minorities. Religious minorities. More blood libel. More bombs at parades. More union-bashing. More public employee-bashing.

This is the future of America. The Left, left without a true choice to vote for, the Right, further disconnected from reality. And, of course, it's not even Left v. Right. It's top versus bottom, but discussing that would be class warfare. And that's not allowed to be discussed.

TAPI

If you were wondering why the US is still in Afghanistan eight years after Osama left and you weren't sold on the idea of bringing democracy there, maybe this is what you were looking for.

 
Please notice the red line, the proposed TAPI gas pipeline, extends from a huge natural gas reserve that sits in Turkmenistan. Who'da thunk, eh?

The significance of the signing of the inter-governmental agreement over the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas-pipeline project on Saturday in Ashgabat cannot be underestimated. It is a unique Silk Road project that holds the key to resolving many complicated issues in the region.

The project is ostensibly about the transportation of the huge Caspian energy reserves to the world market, but it is also about the stabilization of Afghanistan, fostering of Pakistan-India amity, bonding of Central Asia and South Asia and the overall consolidation of US political, military and economic influence in the strategic high plateau that overlooks Russia, Iran and China. 

TAPI is tiptoeing to center stage in the geopolitics of the region primarily due to the pressing need for Ashgabat to find new markets for its gas exports. With the global financial downturn and the fall in Europe's demand for gas, prices crashed. Russia cannot afford to pay top dollar (“European prices”) for the Turkmen gas, nor does it want the 40 bcm (billion cubic meters) of Turkmen gas it previously contracted to purchase.

Ashgabat faces an acute dilemma. Turkmenistan traditionally produces around 70 bcm of gas annually. The volume dropped to 40 bcm this year. Roughly 10 bcm goes to Russia and 12 bcm each to Iran and China. The gas revenue has dramatically fallen and the Turkmen political system is under pressure.

Several large gas fields are coming on line in Russia, which will reduce its need for Turkmen gas. The Yamal Peninsula deposit alone is estimated to hold roughly 16 trillion cubic meters of gas. Yamal can easily feed both the North Stream (55 bcm at full capacity) and South Stream (63 bcm at full capacity) pipelines and still have a surplus.

Meanwhile, Turkmenistan is sitting on the world's fourth-largest gas reserves and plans to increase its gas production to 230 bcm per year by 2030. It desperately needs to find markets and build new pipelines independent of the Soviet-era pipeline system that binds it to Russia.

The South Yolotan field, 350 kilometers to the southeast of Ashgabat, is potentially one of the world's largest natural-gas deposits, with reserves anywhere between 4 and 14 trillion cubic meters. Ashgabat awarded Chinese, United Arab Emirates and South Korean companies with contracts worth US$9.7 billion last December to develop the field. Also, Caspian offshore fields contain another estimated 6 trillion cubic meters (and 12 billion tons of oil). Three American majors - Chevron, ConocoPhillips and TXOil - are bidding for two offshore blocks (out of 32 licensed blocks).

Thus, Berdymukhamedov is being driven by a combination of factors to adopt an energy-export diversification policy. In the recent months, he evinced interest in trans-Caspian projects, but it is a problematic idea since Russia and Iran have so far insisted that such projects require the consent of all riparian countries and this requires a settlement over the status of the Caspian Sea. Besides, Turkmenistan has unresolved territorial disputes with Azerbaijan.

In November, a second Turkmen-Iranian pipeline came on stream and there is potential to increase exports up to 20 bcm. But there are limits to expanding energy ties with Iran or to using Iran as a regional gas hub while the US-Iran standoff continues.

All this compelled Berdymukhamedov to robustly push for TAPI. The projected 2,000-kilometer pipeline, at an estimated cost of $7.6 billion, traverses Afghanistan (735 kilometers) and Pakistan (800 kilometers) to reach India. Its initial capacity will be around 30 bcm but that could be increased to meet higher demand. India and Pakistan have shown interest in buying 70 bcm annually. The pipeline will be fed by the Dauletabad field, which used to supply Russia.

Berdymukhamedov did smart thinking in accelerating TAPI. This is an enterprise whose time has come. Russia cannot easily browbeat him. The US has lined up the Asian Development Bank for the project's funding. An international consortium will undertake the construction of the pipeline.

The pipeline can be easily extended to the Pakistani port of Gwadar and connected with European markets. In short, without appearing to be leaning too far toward the West, Ashgabat is loosening Russia's stranglehold on its gas and oil exports and developing leverage in its dealings with Moscow in future.

Russia can't stop it
Moscow has kept its thoughts to itself, but the geopolitics of the TAPI pipeline are rather obvious. The US is succeeding with a major Silk Road project connecting the Central Asian region with the Western market, while bypassing Russian (and Iranian) territory.

The security of the pipeline is going to be a major regional concern. The onus is on each of the transit countries to secure the pipeline. Part of the Afghan stretch will be buried underground as a safeguard against attacks and local communities will be paid to guard it. But then, Kabul will expect the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to provide security cover, which, in turn, leads to the formalization of the long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan.

Without a doubt, the project leads to an overall strengthening of US influence in South Asia. The US put heavy pressure on Pakistan and India to spurn the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) project. Delhi unabashedly buckled under the US pressure. Pakistan showed some degree of defiance and is still keeping its options open.

There have been occasional threatening noises that Pakistan will turn IPI into an IPC (Iran-Pakistan-China) pipeline. However, the US is offering TAPI as an alternative bone for Pakistan to chew so that it won't be left with much zest to press ahead with the IPC pipeline in any tearing hurry. In sum, Moscow should realize that short of playing a spoiler's role, TAPI might go through.

Pakistan has strong reasons to pitch for TAPI. It is in critical need of staving off an energy crisis. The TAPI pipeline can be operational as early as 2013-14. During 2008-2009, Pakistan's demand for natural gas began outstripping its production by a shortfall of 203 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day). Pakistan's share from TAPI is pegged at 1325 mmcfd (the same as India's).

Pakistan also hopes to get a hefty amount from India as transit fee. Then, there are the downstream economic benefits such as industrial expansion, job creation, etc. Most important, Pakistan sees that TAPI heavily involves the US and its comfort level is high whenever Washington becomes a stakeholder in fostering the normalization of its troubled relationship with India.

As Susan Elliot, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State on South and Central Asian Affairs, put it: "The pipeline's route may serve as a stabilizing corridor, linking neighbors together in economic growth and prosperity. The road ahead is long for this project but the benefits could be tremendous and are certainly worthy of the diligence demonstrated by those four countries so far."

The TAPI pipeline is in actuality a Silk Road connecting Central Asia to the West via the Pakistani port of Gwadar. It makes Pakistan the US gateway to Central Asia. Pakistan rightly estimates that alongside this enhanced status in US regional strategy comes a US commitment to help the Pakistani economy develop and to buttress Pakistan's security needs in the long term.

Thus, the fear of bin Laden the Bad Man, the lack of women's rights in Afghanistan, the Taliban, Sharia law, all those things Americans were supposed to hate and fear, can now all be swept aside. It was about the US getting a pipeline through Kandihar.

Robert Scheer is almost right

It's the game within the game.

Robert Scheer almost has it right about the Clinton nostalgia surrounding Chelsea's wedding. Almost.

Out of respect for privacy, even concerning famous people, I wasn't going to write about the marriage of Chelsea Clinton to a Goldman Sachs alum and budding hedge-fund hustler with the resources to buy a $4 million loft so soon after graduating from Stanford. Hopefully Marc Mezvinsky won't follow in the footsteps of his financier father, "Fast-Talkin' Eddie," as they called him back in Iowa, a former Democratic House member who just completed a five-year federal sentence for dozens of fraud felonies.

Anyway, Chelsea also worked at a hedge fund, her mother dabbled in banking shenanigans in her Whitewater days and father Bill's radical deregulation made it a lot easier for financial plunderers to stay on the right side of the law. So the Clintons and the Mezvinskys have a lot in common. I hope their children will do better, and I was going to simply wish them well until I read Tina Brown's paean to power, "Why America Needed Chelsea's Wedding," in the trend-chasing Daily Beast, which she edits.

It was then that I realized that the revival of the Clinton legacy was on in earnest. Brown, a prominent Brit import, is an expert on refurbishing tarnished royalty, as she demonstrated with her gushing tribute to the Clinton wedding as "a happy throwback to the carefree 1990s." So carefree that no one of importance, certainly not in the Clinton White House, took serious stock of the collapse of hedge funds like Long-Term Capital Management, a harbinger of disasters to come.

He didn't touch on any number of things that happened during the Clinton years such as the trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA and other pro-offshore legislation (backed by Republicans and "moderate" Dems), anti-gay legislation like the Defense Of Marriage Act and Don't Ask Don't Tell, the increase in drug penalties which only worsened the failed drug war and a number of other things which hurt the average American while helping to make the rich get richer.

But this is what disturbed me:

This all reminds me of the pass given that last attempt at American royalty, when the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy came to be whitewashed so that his reckless decisions to invade Cuba and Vietnam were not to be mentioned.

This is why it bothers me:

Robert Scheer was an activist reporter back in the 1960s during the Kennedy Administration. Reading that sentence a casual reader would presume that JFK alone decided to invade Cuba and Vietnam, and that all blame should be put at his feet.

In fact, the plans to invade Cuba were made by the CIA in the Eisenhower Administration. When Kennedy took office he was suspicious about the plans but went along. It was because the CIA misled the President that in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and threatened to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces. The best evidence is that throughout JFK's Administration there was a battle between the President and the intelligence community and that the CIA did things in spite of JFK's disapproval. And that is why Allen Dulles ended up sitting on the Warren Commission and there was not one mention of the CIA in the Warren Report. A pretty good recent book about JFK's years as President would be Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot (which is very good until the chapter where he relies on intelligence asset Walter Sheridan to discuss the Jim Garrison investigation).

The example of Vietnam is even worse. America was involved in Vietnam since WWII, first to prop up the French colonial regime, then moving in after the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu in the early fifties and helping to divide the country into North and South Vietnam. When Kennedy took office in 1961 America had been involved in Vietnam for two decades. Again, Kennedy inherited the Vietnam mess from the Eisenhower Administration and like his dissatisfaction with the CIA he was dissatisfied with the military's ability to wage a winnable war there. In the weeks before his assassination Kennedy wrote a secret National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 263) calling for the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam at a thousand a month. At that point there was between ten and twenty thousand American troops in Vietnam (although many were "temporarily dutied" there and would show up as being elsewhere, perhaps on military bases in the U.S. and were thus hidden on paper). Just days after JFK was assassinated NSAM 273 was released, authorizing increases in troop strength in Vietnam if a Gulf of Tonkin-type event occurred. How convenient that soon thereafter the Gulf of Tonkin event did occur and soon the several thousand Americans under Kennedy became over a half-million Americans under LBJ.

We also know that in the early 1970s CIA agent E. Howard Hunt confessed to forging cables that strongly suggested that the assassination of Diem, the puppet leader of South Vietnam, was done at Kennedy's orders. In other words, the intelligence community was actively smearing JFK after his death. Why were they trying to kill him again?

I haven't seen JFK given a pass on these two events. I've seen him falsely charged with masterminding them, and I've seen these charges repeated over and over by people who now should know better.

In short, Scheer is repeating the CIA story, that these events that Kennedy either was misled into allowing or which he opposed, actually sprang out of Kennedy's evil mind.

In the sixties Scheer worked at Ramparts Magazine, a truly radical magazine at the time which did some amazing reporting. If you had reached adulthood in the sixties and were part of the anti-war movement the one thing you knew was that in every meeting of every peace group there were going to be informers. Declassified information showed that police intelligence agents (the old "red squads"), the FBI, the CIA and even the many different military intelligence groups all had people infiltrating the peace movement.

That's why I've always been suspicious of William Ayer, who'd been part of the Weather Underground. It was usually an agent provocateur who would be the one suggesting violent actions. It was a strategy sure to discredit true peace movement people. And yet Ayer managed to escape going to jail. And then years later he was able to pop up during the 2008 Presidential election to besmirch Obama by the most tenuous of connections. (I am not defending the Obama Administration's most depressing similarities to Dubya's, just saying that the Ayer card suggests a classic "jacketing" propaganda technique.)

Ramparts had a number of interesting people working for it. The neo-conservative David Horowitz, then allegedly a radical leftist, edited the magazine and was also involved with the Students for a Democratic Society, the radical student group most heavily infiltrated by government agents. Was Horowitz a radical who switched to being a radical conservative later in life or was he a government agent who eventually got to play another role?

Robert Scheer is still the radical. And his criticisms of Clinton are good, as far as they go. I suspect that Bill Clinton, who when a student at Oxford went behind the Iron Curtain during his "anti-war" days, may have actually been taking notes for others (remember that Gloria Steinem admitted in a NY Times article that she ran a propaganda shop for the CIA at an early sixties international youth festival). A closer look at Bill Clinton's radical days, or Hillary's summer working for the law firm in Oakland, California that represented the Black Panthers, might reveal a pattern of people being in places where they could collect information that would aid government intelligence interests. Hillary went on to work for the Democratic committee for Watergate. Considering how many people with intelligence backgrounds were insinuated throughout that scandal would it be a surprise if they had informants on the committee staffs? And when CIA pilots who flew weapons to the contras in Central America came back and dumped sacks of cocaine in Mena, Arkansas, guess who was the governor. (Asa Hutchinson, the Republican federal prosecutor in that corner of Arkansas who failed to prosecute that smuggling operation, later ended up as the head of the DEA in the second Bush's administration.)

But perhaps repeating old canards generated by the CIA is more telling. Scheer should know better. And maybe he does.

How it works

I wrote a song, "Skeleton Crew", about how big business can screw the little guy. It goes, "A company can do things a good man would never do, like change its name and move..."

Seems that British Petroleum is considering a name change.

John Kleine, executive director of the BP Amoco Marketers Association, which represents the US distributors, told The Sunday Telegraph that the subject is raised in the course of nearly every conversation he has with members.

"They are interested in where the brand is going, and want it to be returned to its premier place," said Mr Kleine.

But he admits that many question whether a return to the Amoco brand – which BP abandoned at the forecourt shortly after merging with the US oil giant in 1998 – might encourage customers to return.

"Those fires have been fuelled in the last week by a former Amoco executive [Bob Dudley] being named to assume the role of chief executive," Mr Kleine said.

He also pointed out that although Amoco's trademark blue and red torch had been largely switched for BP's yellow-and-green sunflower logo, the Amoco name lives on as BP continues to use it for its premium fuels business.

Although it remains unclear whether there is enough groundswell of consensus for BP to change its brand in the US, Mr Kleine believes that the issue will be brought up at the distributor's annual meeting with the oil giant's senior management team in October.

Hmm. Amoco. I used to pump up my bike tires at an Amoco station. And buy bottles of Yoohoo in their soda machine... So comforting...

Class War

Guess which class is losing.

--83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.

--61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

--66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.

--36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

--A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

--24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

--Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

--Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975

While the middle class is shrinking, their wealth is being transferred to the rich. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has been livid in denouncing this:

“The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families!

“During the last 15 years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy, they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

“Last year, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a combined $25 billion but because of tax policy their lobbyists helped write, they pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, and police officers.”

You ever wonder why the benefits of most tax cuts accrue to the wealthy? That's because the party of the tax cut represents the wealthy. And the saddest thing is that people continue to vote against their own self-interests over and over, whether by fear or by anger. And slowly the country sinks.

Just saying.

What separates the rich and the poor?

Money.

.

No one should be surprised.

The gap between the wealthiest Americans and middle- and working-class Americans has more than tripled in the past three decades, according to a June 25 reportby the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it’s been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest — not only in amount but also as a percentage of income — which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

The average household in the top 1 percent earned $1.3 million after taxes in 2007, up $88,800 just from the prior year, while the income of the average middle-income household hovered around $55,300. While the nation’s total income has grown sharply since 1979, according to the CBPP report, the wealthiest households have claimed an increasingly large share of the pie.

Politics of the oil sludge

I haven't said much about the oil spill lately. Quite honestly, what's there to say? It's sad and depressing and there doesn't seem to be an easy answer.

But here are some observations:

A lot of people in the ecological movement have been saying "I told you so!" Offshore oil drilling has risks, and it's hard to argue now. But there is a difference between drilling in a few hundred feet of water and drilling a mile down.

As long as the U.S. is drilling offshore it should make sure that all safeguards are in place. It's been reported that the U.S. doesn't require safety systems that other countries (like Brazil) do. Why? The whole regulatory bureaucracy has pretty much become a lapdog for the industry. Critics point out that it was oil man George Bush who weakened the various agencies, which is true. But I'd add that there were problems before Bush and Obama hasn't done much to change things.

As for the critics who blame Obama for not showing enough emotion, please. As for the critics who blame Obama for not doing enough, what do you want him to do? Put on his Superman costume, swim to the bottom of the ocean and stick in a cork? The problem with this well is that British Petroleum built something without enough safety measures that once it broke it couldn't fix. As for those folks whining over the last few days about Obama being too tough on BP, because of the all the British pensioners relying on their dividend checks, maybe it's time you invest in solar or windmills.

Another criticism for Obama's critics. Many of the things that they want Obama to do are the things that they've philosophically argued against. They want unrestrained free enterprise until it craps on their front lawn. Then they want the National Guard to come in and clean up things. Where their criticism of Obama is correct, it's because he was too much like what they wanted. Not the rabid socialist at all. 

And those people who've complained about the government working too slowly on those artificial berms to stop the oil, those berms may actually do more harm than good.

The politics of oil along the Gulf Coast has been bipartisan. While Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was fishing out dead pelicans in front of cameras Senator Mary Landrieu was complaining about the jobs lost by having a temporary halt in oil drilling. And while Louisiana has historically been married to the oil industry states like Florida steered clear. And yet they still suffer the consequences.

So what's the easy answer here? There is no easy answer.

Betting on extinction

A British gambling service is taking bets on which species of wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico will go extinct first. Shortest odds are on a turtle.

Definitely the oddest take I've yet seen on the Gulf of Mexico oil leak passed across my desk today, in the form of a notification from bookmakers Paddy Power that they're taking bets on the first species to go extinct as a result of the pollution.

Kemp's Ridley turtle garners the shortest odds at four to five. Candidates at longer prices include elkhorn coral and the smalltooth sawfish at 20 to one.

Intrigued, I called up Ken Robertson, the firm's head of communications, for a quick chat.

The bets weren't exactly flooding in, he told me.

But given what he sees as BP's lack of success in tackling the leak, it's a book likely to remain open considerably longer than a horse race, or even a full cricket test-match series.

Illegal immigration: Why Arizona doesn't change anything.

Here is an interesting article on illegal immigration and the law in Arizona.

The anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona has been called Nazi-like by Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony and condemned by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, but it's been hailed by others around the country as a triumphant breakthrough. So, readers are asking me, which side am I on?

I'm on the side of a federal reform bill that controls the border, provides legal crossings when employers need help and recognizes that it would be cheaper and better for society to have current illegals come clean and pay fines than to round up and deport them.

But mostly I'm on the side of Manny Davila, a recently retired Phoenix cop I met 11 years ago when I wrote about a fellow officer of his who was killed by illegal immigrants during a drug bust. The killing sparked a nasty backlash against immigrants in Arizona, and Davila, who was born in Mexico, had a unique perspective. That's why I wanted to check with him Friday to ask what he made of his state's being once again at the center of the nation's never-ending immigration debate.

Simpletons want to make this simple. Either you're for breaking the law or you're not. But it's not simple. There are an estimated twenty million people who are here illegally. A lot of them are Hispanic, many from Mexico, but there are illegals here from all over the world. Haiti, eastern Africa. Any place that's more economically depressed than America is a source. I know there's a community of illegal Irish in San Francisco. I'd see them in the mornings getting their coffee at the Happy Donut on Irving Street.

One reason why illegal immigration is such a big issue now is because times are hard and it's a great lifeboat issue. While the suits on Wall Street have stolen billions in ponzi schemes that segment of the population that's easily attracted to the fear of the "other" want to push overboard the people who work in the fields and packing plants back out. But some of those people have lived here for decades, have married and have children.

The people who want illegals out of here can imagine forcing out twenty million people. They are bolstered with mostly false arguments about illegals being a drag on the economy. But the economics of some mass round-up, even if possible, is fiscally unrealistic. A conservative estimate is that it would cost around eight trillion dollars to move all those people out of the country which would require either massive tax increases or enormous borrowing from foreign governments. That would break down to around forty thousand per legal man, woman and child staying behind in the US. Can you squeeze that into your family budget? Attention opponents of small government: It would require the creation of a huge government bureaucracy of law enforcement putting people in jail. Those who fear Obama and Big Government want a government big enough to arrest millions of people? In order to think a massive deportation program could happen its fans have to block any empathy for a huge number of people. The law's the law. So what? They also have to employ magical thinking. Anyone who thinks that making millions of people disappear is going to be clean and painless is fooling himself. Think Nazi Germany. Think Rwanda. Think about all those wars in East Africa where one group pushes another group farther into the desert to let them die.

So what's the best solution? Well, you have to establish control of the border, but that's easier said than done. The best way of keeping people from coming here for work is to make it very difficult for undocumented people to work here. Some Democrats in the Senate proposed creating a Social Security card that can be only used by the actual person, maybe matched with fingerprints or something. Twenty years ago members of some conservative movements were opposed to even being required to give anyone their Social Security numbers. I'm not sure how you get around this. I'm not even sure at this late date, when the NSA is listening to our phone calls and reading our emails, that hiding our Social Security numbers is necessarily a good idea. There could be benefits. Having a quick, easy way to ascertain identity would provide a means of universal voter registration. Of course, that would bring about the opposition of Republicans who historically want to suppress whole classes of voters.

Then there's the problem of all the illegals who have lived here for decades. The government doesn't have the means of getting rid of all those people, so there should be a logical means for these people to become legal residents and eventually obtain citizenship. It's either that or some Nazi genocidal movement. People just don't disappear.

Here's the problem: Many businesses like hiring illegals. They're cheap labor and because of their illegal status they don't complain about safety issues or being underpaid. Once those maids and farmworkers are legal they can go to authorities when they're cheated. They can organize.

That's why there's this strange situation where the teabaggers and such, who are the older, whiter Republican constituency, are demanding something to be done and why the Republicans in Washington D.C. are desperately looking for excuses to avoid a real solution. The status quo works for them. Get people angry about illegals but don't solve what makes them angry.

This is my prediction: The law in Arizona won't change much of anything.

The more effective it is the more it will negatively effect the industries that rely on illegals: tourism, farming, small unorganized factories. Imagine what happens the first time a local sheriff arrests a farmer's workforce and allows all those fields of food to rot. So there will occasionally be someone arrested. But it won't be universally enforced. It can't be. Arizona can't fill up its jails and prisons with people who are working illegally when there are actual criminals to arrest. Some have suggested that the law was pushed by local politicians because the state is currently three billion in debt. That is, it's a piece of raw meat for the angry constituents in the hope that they won't notice the crappy job they've been doing. So far it's been working... at distracting them.

There was a line from the sixties: You're either part of the problem or you're part of the solution. If you don't recognize the complexity of the problem you're not going to solve it. If you look for magical solutions you won't solve your problem, unless you think that Germany in flames in 1945 was a good solution to the "problem" of gays, Jews and Slavs. Until the bloviating ass clowns in Washington are ready to sit down and work on realistic immigration reform nothing's going to change. Don't believe me? Let's take a look at Arizona in a year.