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The Biden administration succeeded in getting a lot of funding
for clean energy passed through congress, after which the
environmentalists found an unexpected obstace: there
was so much bureaucracy and over-regulation that progress
at building the solar & wind farms and the long-distance power
lines was running at a snail's pace.
Ever since the birth of the environmental movement in the
sixties, the movement has opposed construction and economic
growth in general. They've been fond of the
hippies who would lie down
in front of bulldozers and they lobbyied for as much regulation
as possible, if only to maliciously gum up the works.
As a result, the US is terrible at building
things.
- Most
other advanced and not-so-advanced countries
have whole fleets of bullet trains and we don't.
- It costs 6 times as much to build a mile of subway in NYC
as it does in Europe.
- Other countries, like Sweden and South Korea, can build
nuclear power plants reasonably on-time and on-budget,
while American ones tend to be a financial disaster.
- It is extremely difficult to build middle-class housing
in our big, successful cities like NYC due to zoning laws
and local objections to building anything but
luxury units. Many people who like living here leave
because they can't afford the rent.
A new book,
"Abundance"
by Ezra Klein and Derek Thomson, published on March
18, 2025, argues that a movement
of deregulation and pro-growth policies offers a new vision
forward for the Democratic Party. The organizer has yet to
read the book, and attendees are not expected to read it.
A review in a San Francisco newspaper
covers the book in more detail.
There is also an organization, Abundance New York,
which lobbies locally to help overcome zoning and bureaucratic
barriers to building homes and subways.
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The United States constitution
is silent on what rights, if
any, people who
want to immigrate have. It really only deals with 3 classes of
human beings: citizens, slaves, and "Indians not taxed".
There are compelling reasons the borders must be enforced:
- For Americans who went to college, the presence of illegal
immigrants means cheap nannies and gardeners. But for those
who didn't, it means they must compete
economically with them, which is
a nightmare. The illegals are far more
motivated than Americans -- if they don't work,
they starve. As fugitives from the law,
they lack the ability to assert their rights -- they will
put up with any abuse the employer dishes
out -- they won't even sue if
they are stiffed!
- Liberal Nobel-Prize winning economists tell the public
"The undocumented workers do only work that Americans
won't do." and Americans without a college degree
see jobs all around them cooking food, waiting tables,
in landscaping and construction, jobs they want,
being filled by
Hispanics with foreign accents, and realize that liberal
experts are lying to
them. Other economists claim, forfeiting all credibility,
that the law of supply and demand is
magically suspended in the low-skilled
labor market.
- The reasons why the United States is so much more
desirable a place to live than the immigrants' countries
of origin are not discussed a lot and are not
well-understood, but culture probably
plays a role. And immigrants, if they come in sufficiently
large numbers, bring the dysfunction of their cultures with
them. Many Central American countries are overrun with
street gangs and cartels. News flash: street
gangs and
cartels are not caused by tropical weather, they are caused
by the culture and values of the people who choose to
join them, and immigrants bring that culture and values
with them. In the United States,
a Hispanic is, on
average, more than a dozen times more likely to be a gang
member than a non-Hispanic white.
- In the 1800's, we accepted nearly any
immigrant who could make
it across the Atlantic. We could do that without being
overwhelmed because technology at the time was such that
the trip was difficult and expensive. But technology today
is such that transportation is no longer such a barrier,
and the sheer numbers who will come if we let them would
completely overwhelm and destroy our country.
- The best way for the US to help improve the lot of the
poorer world is by setting a cultural example of how to
do things right. But if we throw the borders open, as
the Democrats are wont to do, our culture will be overwhelmed
and diluted by the immigrants, and we will eventually
develop a third-world culture, with all the dysfunction
that comes with that.
Nationwide border encounters per year.
Asylum claims by year
We currently have many voters, in fact a whole political party,
who do not want any effective border enforcement.
They tend to judge immigration policies solely on the basis
of how nice they are to would-be immigrants.
They argue that those who want to immigrate should be afforded
all the "due process" afforded citizens. I have heard them
argue that the constitution, international law, and treaties that
we have signed, dictate that anyone who shows up
at our borders and demands asylum has the right
to be afforded a lengthy trial, and while that trial is
conducted, they should be released inside the
country, free to go wherever they want,
heading for the nearest "sanctuary" where they can work and
live indefinitely without fear of deportation, regardless of
the verdict the courts eventually reach with regard to their
asylum claim. That means that "due process" is a
national suicide pact.
We currently have 14-20 million people living in this country
who aren't supposed to be here. Most of them
have not committed crimes since arriving, as they are on best
behavior since they realize that getting arrested could lead
to deportation. How much evidence should be required to
remove them, and how many mistaken removals among those millions
would be tolerable?
Trump
deported 200 Venezuelan alleged gang members directly to
an El Salvadoran prison. This is troublesome,
because it is
not merely removing someone from the country, but actually
imprisoning them, probably for a long time.
What methods should we use to determine if someone is a gang
member -- they don't carry "gang ID's" on them. They
won't admit to being gang members. Often
they have identifying tattoos -- should that be enough
evidence? The DHS seems to think so.
There has been some ruckus and outrage over the
arrest and
deportation of technically law-abiding legal
immigrants, but
according to the law, the secretary of state has the authority
to deport any legal immigrant at his whim.
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