Three great forces shape a society: culture, politics, and economics. Each of them influences the other. The late Andrew Breitbart famously observed that politics are “downstream” of culture. In other words, culture shapes political expectations. People tend to vote in favor of issues and candidates that enjoy cultural approval. Political commentators often refer to the “Overton window,” which covers the range of “acceptable” positions candidates | Read More »
Every participant in the immigration debate agrees on the importance of assimilation. (In public, anyway. Privately, I suspect some of the open-borders folks could not care less about it, or are actively hostile to it. But everyone says they hope immigrants assimilate and become fully invested, patriotic American citizens.) What is the best way to encourage assimilation? It’s not an individual process that can be applied to specific | Read More »
Every sane person in the country aka most people outside of the DC beltway, is asking the million dollar question of the immigration debate: why don’t we just implement the enforcement measures that actually work before risking another wave of illegal immigration by granting amnesty now? The issue would largely dissipate if they would merely begin enforcing the laws on the books. But when you | Read More »
The best way to win a political argument is by manipulating the rhetoric used to describe the two sides in a debate. The Democrats and the Chuck Schumer Republicans have done a marvelous job hijacking the term “reform” and deriding those who oppose their bill to grant mass amnesty, double record immigration levels, and hamper future enforcement, as anti “immigration reform.” They have repeated the | Read More »
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods to discuss the immigration reform bill in the Senate, problems he faced as a border state AG and why new technology could help us secure the border.
Read More »A common ploy in parliamentarian scheming is for leaders to hand out hall passes for vulnerable members to vote against leadership’s proposal, knowing that it has the votes to pass anyway. The rationale is that those members should be able to hoodwink their constituents without compromising passage of the bill. This dynamic usually plays out with the leadership and rank-and-file of the same party, but | Read More »
After 4 years of endless scandals sliding off Obama’s Teflon back, it appears his luck is finally coming to an end. Why would Republicans want to bail him out by bestowing him with an amnesty bill? We all know that Obamacare was the crown jewel of Obama’s first term. With passage of that monstrosity, Obama effectively nationalized the largest sector of the economy and created | Read More »
All conservatives and libertarians agree that government should not set wage requirements on private enterprise. That would violate the foundation of a free market economy. But should industries and special interest groups get to use the power of government to tilt our immigration system in a way that will actively depress wages? Is that free market doctrine? I’ve been looking to find someone to come | Read More »
It looks like we’ve discovered the panacea for all of our economic and social ills. We’ve found the solution to the entitlement crisis as well. We’re going to find the poorest countries in the world and import as many of their people as possible within a short period of time. That way we will have millions of people paying into Social Security, purveying the “trust | Read More »
Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee began its markup of the gang of 8 immigration deform bill (s.744). The striking thing about the markup is that any casual observer would think we were living in 1965 or 1986, when there was either relatively low legal immigration or no failed amnesty to look back upon. To most of the senators sitting around the table, the border is more secure than ever (despite the sharp rise in crossings), our record levels of immigration don’t exist, and there is no reason to implement the enforcement before the legalization.
Read More »As we’ve noted over the past few weeks, there are dozens of systemic flaws in the approach of the gang’s immigration bill. But there are two overarching problems with all of these proposals: 1) the legalization (and certainly the suspension of deportations) is immediate and certain; the enforcement measures are later and tenuous 2) it is incontrovertibly clear that granting such a low-skilled population a | Read More »
Imagine the biggest conservative donors in America banding together to form a group, “Progressives for Retirement Security,” for the purpose of promoting private retirement accounts. Imagine that group running ads starring Chuck Schumer promoting private Social Security accounts as examples of bold progressive reform. Don’t worry, hell will freeze over from global warming before that happens. If you’ve been watching Fox News or listening to | Read More »
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Senator Ted Cruz back to discuss the online sales tax bill that passed the Senate this week, the battle on Capitol Hill over immigration reform and the movement to draft Ted Cruz for a 2016 White House run.
Read More »When Jim DeMint delivered his farewell speech in the Senate, he touched on a salient point that is often lost in the raucous of political discourse. The entrenchment of political interests and allegiances has often made commonsense ideas that transcend political ideology impossible to implement. Nowhere is this more evident than with the push to hold national security hostage for mass amnesty. We have a | Read More »
After picking apart the gang bill one issue at a time, I put out a summary of all the issues with the immigration bill for The Madison Project. Here it is for those who have not seen it. Note that some of this might be subject to change after the dust settles from the 350-page manager’s amendment that was tacked onto the bill. Enforcement/Security No | Read More »
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