The Solution from Within

Dear Mr. Kettle,

Some time back, I read somewhere that President Eisenhower miraculously solved our immigration issues during the course of his administration and in very short order. For whatever reason, that revelation has stuck in my head. Somehow a sitting President of the United States of America resolved, through presidential decree, an issue deemed to be plaguing the American people. I took note of that declaration, dutifully scribbling it upon a virtual post-it, tucking it away in the corner of my mind. Having seen the level of dysfunction within the confines of our Capital grow over the past three decades, that bit of trivia found its way to the top of a sizeable of pile of minutiae, with alarming regularity. Today, when I hear a politician, regardless of affiliation, a not-so-small voice in my head convulsively screams, “Peter Principle!”

Depending upon what direction the foul wind blows, our government is either performing with the ineptitude its Founders intended or it’s crippled by unfettered political finance and associated special interests. Whichever explanation you care to embrace, I find it implausible that we survived a civil war and two world wars to rise to global preeminence with leadership operating at its current level of impotence. Please don’t read more into my statement than is there, for I point accusingly at every sitting member of all branches of our government as co-conspirators in this farce. However, as I jump from my seat to boo and hiss and shake my fist at having been cheated of my money and time, it dawns on me that I’m not sitting in the auditorium with my equally disgruntled, fellow citizen-spectators. Rather, we’re all crowded in the wings, like the aristocracy of old, making ourselves as much a part of the show as the hapless thespian inhabiting the stage. Meanwhile, the rest of the world gawks and guffaws at us all with stunned disbelief from those dark seats.

It’s always been my contention that an illegal immigrant is merely an international tourist, until some U.S. citizen or resident gives him a job. Voicing that observation publically always gets me look as if I’d just cried out, “That baby’s ugly!” Sadly, it doesn’t matter which side of the political fence the listener might be standing when the proclamation is uttered. After all, we the citizenry are not the problem, rather the fault lies with our leadership, for their inability to lead, regardless of governmental branch or party affiliation. If they cannot lead then how can we follow?

Someone recently commented to me that undocumented workers are the bane brought upon us by corporate America. Regrettably, I felt compelled to correct him on this subject. While it’s true that corporate America has grown dependent upon a shadow workforce of people who work without the full rights and protections that the rest of us enjoy, so too has suburban America become addicted to the same vice. In my little corner of the country, I can drive to at least three locations within ten minutes of my home where anyone with the need for cheap day labor can acquire it. Need a ditch digger, bricklayer or carpenter? No problem. Need your lawn cut? No problem. Speak no English? No problem. After all, these guys aren’t being hired to quote Shakespeare’s Macbeth and they’re certainly not asked to sign a labor contract.

One of these sites which I’ve mentioned is a permanent facility constructed with local tax dollars. It was erected in an effort to make the location adjacent to the town square more palatable for both the workers and those local businessmen and women who come each day to hire them. That particular facility was built during the previous U.S. Presidential administration and continues to this day to create more than a little drama in the township where it can be found. Still, it was what the local business community wanted and what the local business community received. Another location is a simple, half-mile stretch of five-lane highway where men stand shoulder to shoulder, as early as four a.m., in hopes of picking up work. Regardless of the weather, one can always find two or three dozen of them waiting on one side of the road or the other until four, five or even six in the evening. These places are representative of a thousand others that can be found in and around the greater Houston area. These folks aren’t being hired by Megalomart/Acme, Inc. so much as by Joe the Plumber. You see, good ol’ Joe knows that it’s cheaper, easier and faster to get day laborer this way than to recruit, train and retain an assistant. No payroll taxes, no unemployment or workers’ compensation insurance. If the gentleman he recruits on Monday proves to be lacking, there’s no filing for unemployment insurance come Tuesday morning. It’s really all quite civilized.

Sir, you recently asserted that you could find no evidence to support the claim I made regarding the prolific use of undocumented workers in a subset of the agricultural industry. I have no doubt in the voracity of your claim, for you see, folks are pretty much the same in this regard. We don’t like to openly discuss those activities that in the light of day might appear unseemly. The sad reality isn’t that we have an illegal immigration issue or an uncontrollable undocumented worker problem. The real issues are two-fold. First, we possess a cultural duality regarding how we choose to treat these folks that reminds me of someone suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia, in that we shout violently and vehemently at the situation even as we engage it in such a way as to ultimately exacerbate the problem. Our collective outrage is so disjointed and incoherent that we’re completely ineffectual at helping ourselves. As we try to attack the problem, we end up injuring ourselves and each other in a macabre fashion. Second, even those to whom we might turn for assistance – our leadership – appear equally afflicted. This, kind sir, is the true zombie apocalypse visited upon us, making for raucously disturbing theater for any poor soul bearing witness from the auditorium.

Of course, this all brings me back to the original assertion regarding how those who came before us supposedly resolved the same issue. By 1954, intended or not, the United States was starting to reap the benefits of its post-war efforts to stabilize affairs, both internally and abroad. Thanks to an after-thought clause in the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (better known as the GI Bill) our country gave birth to an unprecedented number of scientist, engineers and artists, making contributions at levels unheard of since the Age of Enlightenment or the Renaissance or, perhaps, the Persian Empire. Thanks to the vision of U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the United States not only emerged from World War II victorious, we also create new markets in which to peddle our surge in industry and ingenuity - markets that would endure for half a century. For the first time in nearly a generation, we were shining as a nation and doing so more brightly than in any time in our country’s history. We knew prosperity in a way previously unknown and in this knowing found a means to elevate the status of labor to where a shadow workforce was not a requisite – or at least not as large of one. Is it possible – just possible – that President Eisenhower’s push to purge our borders of unwanted visitors coincided with a communal desire and will to get our collective house in order?

Do we need immigration? Absolutely. Do we need to stop treating immigration like a disease to be eradicated? Absolutely. Perhaps if we look upon our immigration issues as symptoms of larger systemic issues within our borders, we might better understand the love-hate relationship which we openly hold for the undocumented worker. Only then can we hope to understand and, hopefully, resolve the matter that’s more and less mad science. Until that day comes, I feel there are no answers and the solutions we implement will be as fleeting as those we impose in 1954.

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot

“The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interest. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.”

– James Madison, From The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection. First published in the Daily Advertiser. Thursday, November 22, 1787. Part of the Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 10.

The Great Immigration Debate, Part II... A Classic Dilemma

To the illustrious Mr. Pot:

My Yahoo dictionary describes the word dilemma thus: n. noun    1. A situation that requires a choice between options that are or seem equally unfavorable or mutually exclusive. 2. A problem that seems to defy a satisfactory solution. 3. An argument that presents two alternatives, each of which has the same consequence.

That enigmatic definition seems to sum up the immigration debate, albeit in a somewhat scholarly and philosophic manner. The irony we derive from the on-line lexicographers is that their definition could easily apply to practically any undertaking by the two major parties in the United States Congress. Laws are written, not to be in the best interest of our country, but merely as a compromise representing the least of a number of evils. And due to a dearth of bona fide statesmen, the bottom line for most legislation is how it will play with a politician's constituency.

The immigration dilemma is no different. It has two major components to be considered. The first and foremost part is the political implications of any meaningful immigration law passed with the teeth to enforce it. (An old trick in the political game is to pass laws that either have no sanctions or are simply not funded. It gets everyone off the hook and the Honorables can return to “fly-over” country as noble warriors). The second part of effective immigration reform is really the most important, and that is the economic impact.

Political implications are famously transparent in the immigration debate. Our left leaning brethren see visions of electoral victories dancing in their heads. They fancy a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, continuous residency in the White House, and a Supreme Court that will be simply an extension of left wing ideology with the black robes to enforce it nationally.  Chuck Shumer, the gregarious and garrulous Democrat senator from New Yawk, regularly demands that any credible immigration reform must include a path to the ballot box....excuse me....a path to citizenship and voting privileges for the millions of undocumented Democrats now in our country. That pretty much sums up the left side of the debate. On the pin striped and wing tipped side, Republicans have serious concerns about the economic impact of opening up the national treasury (if there really is one) to tens of millions of uneducated and underemployed men, women, and children. While Democrats seem to literally salivate at the prospect of  more spending for bi-lingual education, unemployment benefits, public health care, food purchase assistance, burgeoning union membership, and the outrageous earned income tax credit, most Republicans realize that somewhere down the line the tab will have to be paid for those trinkets. A straw man argument persists about how citizenship for the illegals leads to higher food prices, but most realistic thinkers realize the market could adjust to that factor. The real impact for the consumer will be the now and future increase in federal, state, and local spending to accommodate our newest citizens and the resulting tax increases necessary to finance it. There is genuine concern that the public assistance demands in our country cannot tolerate an additional 20 million or so new comers and the subsequent generations to follow.

An esoteric yet fleeting notion exists abroad about America being the land of opportunity....the great Melting Pot. Past generations of those landing on our shores legally came here truly to assimilate...to learn English....to become productive members of this great land. While there are many who still share that ideal, they are the ones that are at the back of the line of the immigration rolls, waiting patiently (and legally) for their chance to be a productive part of the many opportunities our country has to offer. These are the immigrants that most Americans welcome with open arms. They respect our laws, have an overwhelming desire to become productive members of our society, and most importantly, want to play by the rules. After years of waiting, they proudly gather in courtrooms, libraries, or other public meeting areas and take their oaths of citizenship. With their hands placed respectfully over their hearts, they pledge allegiance to our flag.

While I share Mr. Pot's frustration about a realistic solution to the many illegal aliens in our country, I firmly believe that very little if anything will change dramatically. Politicians WILL slowly allow a more liberal policy about immigration. We WILL NOT erect a Great Wall our borders with which to hold back the hordes. Public entitlements in border states and elsewhere WILL balloon to unmanageable proportions. We WILL NOT embrace mass deportations. Conservatives will be thrown a few bones to politically purchase their vote. Perhaps voting privileges for our newest citizens will be delayed. Perhaps participation in the Social Security and Medicare schemes may be temporarily prohibited. In any event, the liberal crowd will have their way, eventually. They are a patient lot, and will continue to rely on their Republican counterparts to remain a spineless lot.  Together, they are insuring America will change. Fortunately for those of us who knew of America's greatness at one time, we won't be around to notice.

Respectfully ( and regretfully ) submitted,

Mr. Kettle

The Great Immigration Debate

Dear Mr. Kettle,

An illegal alien is merely an international tourist on holiday, until some American gives him a job.

That's my standard reply when I see someone vocalizing their disgust over our country's current immigration issues. Most of the comments are visceral, shoot from the hip exclamations, vented in frustration and anger over a situation that no one seems able to understand, much less control. Not even our leadership has an answer on which they can agree to act.

Is there a fix for immigration reform or is all the talk in Washington posturing and theater. If undocumented workers were "legalized", then they could, in theory, demand better pay and work conditions. On the other hand, maintaining a second-class work force, living in the shadows of our society, with no rights or privileges, makes for a powerful labor tool for getting work done that most Americans would look upon and say, "No way! Not under those conditions. Not for those wages."

Would fixing the illegal immigration issue address the crisis in our welfare system? Would fixing the undocumented worker issue resolve our unemployment conundrum? Would fixing these things introduce other socio-economic issues as we seek to backfill those positions left vacant from the mass exodus of 12 million illegal immigrants? At last estimate, illegal immigrants represent 4% of our population. What's the impact of demanding their immediate departure? Would it be like the removal of a cancer, where the patient suffers the ravages of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but ultimately survives and thrives to live the balance of a full and productive life? Would it be like the amputation of a limb, leaving us deformed, disable, and depressed as we struggle to compensate for a our life-long disability?

No, I have no answers here. However, as I watch our leadership gather in their Colosseum to give thumbs-ups or thumbs-down to the question of should they go or should they stay, I have lots of questions...and the list grows longer.

What do you think?

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Are we there yet?

If we look upon our government as irredeemable, unfixable and turn our backs upon it, are we done? Is the great experiment over?

Has intransigence made those who walk the halls of Congress the highest paid welfare recipients in the history of our nation?

There was a time when we won wars, elevated our old from deprivation and sent our people to stand upon other planets. Where are we know and is it a good place? Is it the place where we thought we'd be? Where we ought to be?

The Price of Eggs in America, Indeed!

February 1, 2014

To the illustrious Mr. Pot:

Since I share in Mr. Pot's admiration for an efficiently produced product such as the ubiquitous egg, I wandered aimlessly through cyberspace trying to determine the considerable effect that the forced labor of illegal and/or undocumented immigrants has on egg production in our country. Apparently there are many national scandals in the United Kingdom involving the use of questionable labor practices when the British chickens produce their eggs. And while the egg industry is a multi-billion dollar “cash cow”, (my sincerest apologies), I found that the bulk of the incredible, edible eggs we consume in the U.S. of A. come from relatively small family operations. I regress to the early days of television and a program called “The Real McCoys” comes to mind. They had a farm hand named Pepino who was obviously of Hispanic heritage. While Pepino was not allowed to live in the farm house with Grandpappy Amos, Luke, and Sugarbabe, he seemed quite content and well treated. Of course, the obvious question was: Did Pepino have the proper green card to be in this country or were the Real McCoys merely taking advantage of his questionable status to force him to do work that no self-respecting American would do? Since the show, and most of its stars have gone to that great grange hall in the sky, I guess we will never know.

Getting back to the issue at hand, apparently Mr. Pot feels the price of a dozen eggs, or in his case, a dozen and a half eggs, is artificially low and is somehow the result of unscrupulous practices by the evil giants of the national egg cartel. Fortunately, no such movement exists since most farmers are more like Amos McCoy than Bill Gates. There is an organization called the United Egg Producers which is a lobbying voice for the small family farm egg producers. But what I detect at the heart of Mr. Pot's dismay at paying a reasonable price for a product is the almost inevitable manifestation of the liberal conscience and an accompanying guilt trip down Capitalism Lane. The truth is when liberals come across the success of the capitalistic system in the form of efficiently produced and reasonably priced products, they almost always suspect “fowl play” (apologies again). Many opine: “We can't be paying prices this low. We're Americans...we're greedy and evil and certainly don't deserve low egg prices.”

I marvel at the concept of the liberal conscience. It's everywhere! Race relations, women's rights, gay marriage, and now Eggland's Best. Mr. Pot, when will the race card be played concerning the discriminatory practice of producing either brown or white eggs. And what kind of demented racist mind could ever consider a white egg preferable to a brown egg? Weighty issues to be sure.

But now on to the inevitable result of the liberal “good intentions” that result from the liberal conscience. Suppose we overhaul our country's immigration policies.....we bail out existing illegals and grant them a path to citizenship. They become bone fide residents of our great country. Since they are now part of the America that finds menial farm labor beneath them, what are we to do to keep our egg prices so low?  Not to worry, liberal politicians have their subsidies in hand and are riding to the rescue!  So the egg producers will be paid to produce (or not to produce) eggs and will get a government check to boot! And egg prices, like milk and other dairy products will be regulated. And the taxpayer, in addition to buying the product, will pay a subsidy for the low prices he enjoys. Lewis Carroll could devote an entire treatise to such inane stupidity.

I did benefit in one way from my cyberspace trek. I found out a great deal about the Farm Bill which in effect seems to be a bunch of smaller bills. It's like the toy chest at the doctor's office for good boys and girls. Reach in...there's low priced crop insurance backed by the good will of the American taxpayer, there's over a billion dollars from the Justice Department to amend for past injustices to Hispanic and female farmers (even though very few in those classes have even asked for them), and the usual subsidies for tobacco et al.

I must conclude by pointing out that in all of the guilt trips related to egg production, one major class of farm worker has been ignored, even by the illustrious Mr. Pot. I refer of course to the laying hen who, in her wretched life, is first prostituted out to the farm rooster, then forced to produce copious amounts of eggs only to have them taken from her (these eggs are potential children after all, and all good liberals agonize for THE CHILDREN!). Yet not one Ted Kennedy clone has come forth as an advocate for Chicken Rights. Sure, PETA insures humane “work conditions” and treatment but as soon as the laying days are over, poor Chicken Little is destined to become “finger lickin' good” or wind up in a small red carton as a McNugget.

I suggest a national trust fund for these abused farm workers with contributions comparable to the minimum wage. I am sure it would enjoy the same success as other liberally inspired programs such as Social Security and Medicare. By the way, while we're on the subject, shouldn't chickens be covered under ObamaCare?

Sincerely,

Mr. Kettle

The Price of Eggs in America

Dear Mr. Kettle:

I returned from my weekly grocery shopping excursion having found what I thought was a small treasure. I’d purchased a container of eggs for a mere $2. It was not just a dozen eggs but, rather, eighteen, grade-A large eggs. They weren’t advertised as being on sale and, once I’d gotten home and taken a moment to reflect on it, that price nagged at me. A horrible thought came to me and ran to the fridge to check the expiration date, only to find that I had weeks to go before they went ripe. Still, I have a suspicious nature. I remember an experiment that I could perform which would prove unquestioningly that my purchase was indeed “farm fresh.”  I carefully place all eighteen eggs in a pot of water and, with more than a little relief, watched them all settle to the bottom. Carefully drying them and placing them back into their carton, I could not shake the feeling that something was not quite right with this purchase.

Being just a little infatuated with numbers – and eggs – I decided I need to know what the going street price was for a dozen eggs. Knowing of only one all-encompassing source for such information, I turned to the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics for the answer. Sixty seconds later, I was more than a little crestfallen to discover that as recently as last month, the median price for a dozen grade-A large eggs was, in fact, $2. There was no conspiracy to peddle inferior eggs off on me as seemingly normal eggs at an incredible great price. There was no terrorist plot to lull me into a pattern of eggtravagance. Then the synapses in my head finished chugging, a puff of smoke escaped my left ear and the “ah-ha” light click on over my head. I’d failed to normalize my data. I wasn’t doing an apple to apple comparison – I mean egg to egg comparison. You see my $2 purchase meant that I’d actually paid only $1.33 per dozen. To put it in the colloquialism of the original 19^th century Sherlock Holmes, the game was afoot.

I pulled the data from BLS on the historical price of eggs, going back twenty-fives and found some disturbing patterns. The first thing I noted was that once I averaged out the price increases into a median annual percentage increase, that percentage rate of 4.17% came within one tenth of one percent of matching the median annual Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the same period - a number also maintained by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. While not a particularly earth-shattering revelation in itself, I did feel as if I’d just walked up to a craps table for the first time in my life and rolled a natural on the come-out. The hackles rose on my neck, so I looked a little deeper.

My second revelation came when I looked at the standard deviation on the price of the same dozen eggs over the previous twelve months. You see my fortuitous purchase of a dozen eggs for a mere $1.33 was eleven standard deviations below the government recorded norm for the previous year. Again, to draw upon an analogy, my fortuitous purchase was like tripping through the desert to discover a collection of pyramids, except that the desert was not near Cairo, Egypt, but rather Alice, Australia. That phenomenal price was simply out of place. Not quite as fantastic as finding water on the Moon, but a distant second. Many things could explain the price spread, until you start looking too closely to the numbers. Perhaps the top 1% of wage earners in this country do spend obscene sums for the eggs in some perverse exercise in trickle-down economics, but I have difficulty with that image.

As such, lots of fantastic possibilities began running through my mind, in part because the Internet had gone down by this time, there was nothing worth watching on television and my e-reader needed to be re-charged. I began imagining a Jetson’s style chicken egg operation, where George J. Jetson himself oversaw an army of Rosie Robots efficiently harvesting eggs from broods of contented chickens. I envisioned GMO chickens imbued with opposable thumbs and sufficient intellect that they collected their eggs under the direction of a benevolent chicken wrangler, who guided their actions telepathically, like a scene from a Stephen King novel.

Then my neural synapses clicked again, a puff of smoke emerged from my right ear and all became clear. It was an alien invasion, a conspiracy of national – no, international – proportion, meant to lull me and every other egg-loving, red-blooded American into a false sense of complacency. I’d been duped!

We’ve known for some time that the backbone of American agriculture is not our ingenuity or even the rugged individualism of the American family farmer. While these are important legs on which the American dinner table is supported, they’re balanced unequivocally by a labor force that we openly hate and secretly love. That labor force performs those requisite tasks needed to get that egg from beneath the chicken to atop the table…and some of those tasks are downright disagreeable. In fact, if more of us voting Americans had to endure the work conditions necessary to bring us a dozen American produced eggs from red-blooded, American chickens at the unheard of price of $1.33 per dozen there would be blood. While that sounds melodramatic, we’ve conveniently forgotten that the rights and privileges we enjoy as workers in this country were written in the blood of those who came before us. Little is spoken in American history classes about the Homestead Strike, of 1892, the Battle of Blair Mountain, in 1921, or a hundred other such events in our history that have led to mundane privileges, which we now take for granted, such as the forty-hour work week, child labor laws, and work safety standards, to name a few. These were minor civil wars, pitting American against one another, as one small group sought not equality, but dignity and opportunity in the work they performed.

Fortunately, we’ve devised a solution for avoiding a repeat of those bloody chapters, while still providing us with agricultural products at fantastically affordable prices. We’ve development a second-class workforce, invisible and silent, stripped of as many rights and privileges as we can justify, while still calling ourselves civilized. It’s a beautiful system. If these people care not for the squalid conditions, abysmal pay and abject public we offer them, we simply replace them with the next batch refuges seeking to escape even more dire conditions from where they came. We grumble loudly and publicly at the scourge that we call our illegal immigration problem. Our politicians jockey for position on one side of the argument or the other, offering to find a solution, while never quite getting around to doing so. Meanwhile, we blithely and ignorantly stand in line at the grocer buying eggs, whose sale price is statistically improbable, whether that be $1.33 or $2 per dozen.

I have no solutions or directions to offer here. The simple fact is that should all those angry Americans seeking an immediate answer to our illegal immigration problem were granted their wish they’d find it a bitter sweet victory. If the estimated 12 million illegal aliens were rounded up and deported overnight, we would face a crisis of epic proportion. In the food industry alone there would be chaos. No one would be there to collect my eggs! Certainly not at the wages and work conditions that currently exist.

Chicken ranchers would eventually find someone to fill that void. However, if those people have a voice, know their rights, and are willing stand up for them, there will be blood. At the very least, we’ll likely see is a return to economic turmoil like that seen in the early 1970’s, when Federal intervention was necessary to control inflation and forestall widespread, economically induced famine within our own borders. What’s more, we won’t be getting our eggs for the phenomenal price of a mere $2 per dozen, nor will the price increases stay so neatly in lockstep with inflation overall. My egg fantasy would be over.

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot