By John Semmens

One of the big arguments for tightening immigration barriers is the fear that immigrants will enlarge the welfare rolls. An example of this fear was recently demonstrated in California at a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee in San Diego. "San Diego may be the gateway to Mexico, but our taxpayers are the doormat," said County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Horn. "Every dollar spent on providing services to illegal immigrants or their children is a dollar that isn't used on taxpaying citizens."

The idea of people sneaking into the country in order to soak the American taxpayer provokes anger. To be fair, though, native-born Americans are already soaking the American taxpayer and ought to provoke a similar anger. In fact, illegal immigrants account for only a tiny minority of those currently on the welfare rolls.

Those who run the gauntlet of fences, guards, and environmental hardships to illegally enter the United States evince a measure of enterprise that would seem to make them unlikely to seek out welfare benefits. An illegal immigrant arriving in America is more apt to avoid contact with government authorities than to try to scam the system. The bureaucracy normally requires those applying for welfare to show a birth certificate, visa, or passport in order to sign up for food stamps or cash assistance. Illegals would need to steal or forge such documents if they are to game the system.

Rather than go to the trouble of trying to defraud the welfare system, illegal immigrants are more likely to proceed directly to vacant, entry-level, low-paying jobs. Working illegals are not a burden to the economy. They provide useful services and pay taxes to help support the government.

The concern that an influx of illegal aliens may lead to a potentially crushing welfare burden is not entirely unwarranted. There are political elements in the U.S. who view a rising welfare clientele as a key to electoral success. Inasmuch as reforms enacted during the 1990s significantly reduced existing welfare rolls, the power base of those favoring big government has been diminished. So, while the welfare system's current drain on our economy cannot fairly be blamed on illegal immigrants, unrestrained immigration could significantly worsen this drain.

It is the welfare system that has sucked generation after generation of American citizens into the trap of dependency. The availability of government subsidies lures people away from the effort of work. The opportunity to get compensation for drug- and alcohol-related disabilities lowers people's resistance to these vices. Payments made to unwed mothers undermine the incentive to take precautions against unplanned pregnancies.

These evils of the welfare system predate any problems we may perceive arising from illegal immigration. The pernicious effects of the welfare system would continue to take a toll even if our borders were perfectly impervious to illegal penetration.

In short, the problem isn't Mexicans. The problem is the welfare state. Once government takes on paternal responsibility for everyone it is an open invitation to freeloaders--both at home and abroad. The solution is not closing our borders. It is eliminating the practice of robbing taxpayers in order to provide benefits for a client underclass. This would remove the disincentives for work inherent in the system. It would also return money to the private sector, where it could sustain more business activity and investment--providing more jobs for natives and immigrants alike.

Whether these clients of the welfare state are Mexicans or native-born Americans, the process of robbing taxpayers to support them is wrong. Focusing attention only on Mexican "invaders" turns the issue into one of race and nationality and obscures the moral wrong of theft.

People traversing geography in search of a better life is how the American continent was populated. There is no moral foundation for policies that attempt to close the doors so we can preserve the good life for us. There is no real us vs. them. We are all human beings trying to survive and provide for our families. The crime is that government coercion is used to force some to take on the responsibility of providing for others.

John Semmens [jsemmens@cox.net] is an economist and policy advisor to The Heartland Institute

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

In response to a complaint by a single viewer, British media regulator Ofcom said Turner Broadcasting has offered to delete scenes that "glamorize smoking" in cartoons from earlier decades, when such scenes were commonplace. According to Reuters, the change was instigated when a single viewer complained to Ofcom about two scenes in two Tom and Jerry cartoons (one scene in each) shown on Turner's Boomerang channel in England, 56 percent of whose viewers are aged four to fourteen.

As a result, a Europe-based representative of Turner Broadcasting said the firm will "voluntarily" go through the entire inventory of cartoons owned by the firm, as reported by Ofcom in its news bulletin, according to Reuters:

"We are going through the entire catalog," Yinka Akindele, spokeswoman for Turner in Europe, said on Monday.

"This is a voluntary step we've taken in light of the changing times," she said, adding the painstaking review had been prompted by the Ofcom complaint.

This applies only to Great Britain at this time, as far as I can ascertain.

It's interesting how times change. In the 1950s, top-rated I Love Lucy was sponsored by a cigarette company, and the firm and network insisted that Lucy be seen holding a cigarette as often as possible. (Of course, it is debatable whether Lucille Ball can be said to have been capable of glamorizing anything at that time. . . .) Requirements that sympathetic characters smoke cigarettes and villans not smoke at all or smoke pipes or cigars were common practice throughout television at that time.

Such strictures applied even on the Camel News Caravan, a network news program, where Winston Churchill could not be shown holding a cigar.

Today, the situation is reversed: sympathetic characters do not smoke cigarettes, and villains do. It's a better lesson, I suppose, but one sometimes wonders why we all have to be treated like children because the federal and state governments will not allow the media to trust parents to teach their kids that smoking cigarettes is a very bad and unnecessary risk.

From Karnick on Culture.

Posted by Sam Karnick at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

letters@economist.com

Of course the UK’s new suburbs have not attracted people out of cars and into public transport (“Field of Dreams”. July 29, 2006). For the vast majority of trips, whether in the suburbs of Northampton, Phoenix or Paris, public transport is at best a slower, poor substitute for travel by car. Often, it is not even available. Public transport is about the core, the only destination to which public transport can compete with the car. Urban travel has long since been much more dispersed than that. It is a reality the planners would best stop ignoring.

Wendell Cox

Principal, Demographia, St. Louis
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris
Former member, Los Angeles County Transportation Commission

Posted by Wendell Cox at 05:57 PM | Permalink

So the other day, I got an intimate e-mail from my chatty corporate friend Meg Whitman, the president of Ebay. Who would think that this high profile CEO would have time in her busy schedule to talk with me?

What, that wasn't a personal message, that was Ebay taking advantage of their vast customer base to further their corporate interests in a battle of titans over who is going to pay the cost to relieve internet chokepoints looming as high bandwidth products begin to reach consumers. Say it ain't so. I thought I finally had friends in high places.

Now that my hopes of jetsetting with the rich and famous have subsided, I'm left with a silly sillogism. Verizon is a big company. Ebay is a big company. Why should I think Verizon is not on my side and Ebay is?

And how does Ebay justify its different treatment of volume customers. Why does somebody who can afford to pay for an 'ebay store' get the red carpet while the plebs languish on the backroads of this online yardsale? After all, aren't we all neutral?

Not according to my friend Meg who says "it's our net" by which she means its ebay's net :

Dear [unsuspecting, gullible, stupid, malleable, reactionary, emotionally driven ebay customer],

As you know, I almost never reach out to you personally with a request to get involved in a debate in the U.S. Congress. However, today I feel I must.

Right now, the telephone and cable companies in control of Internet access are trying to use their enormous political muscle to dramatically change the Internet. It might be hard to believe, but lawmakers in Washington are seriously debating whether consumers should be free to use the Internet as they want in the future.

Join me by clicking here -- http://www.ebaymainstreet.com/netneutrality -- to send a message to your representatives in Congress.

The phone and cable companies now control more than 95% of all Internet access. These large corporations are spending millions of dollars to promote legislation that would allow them to divide the Internet into a two-tiered system.

The top tier would be a "Pay-to-Play" high-speed toll-road restricted to only the largest companies that can afford to pay high fees for preferential access to the Net.

The bottom tier -- the slow lane -- would be what is left for everyone else. If the fast lane is the information "super-highway," the slow lane will operate more like a dirt road.

Today's Internet is an incredible open marketplace for goods, services, information and ideas. We can't give that up. A two-lane system will restrict innovation because start-ups and small companies -- the companies that can't afford the high fees -- will be unable to succeed, and we'll lose out on the jobs, creativity and inspiration that come with them.

The power belongs with Internet users, not the big phone and cable companies. Let's use that power to send as many messages as possible to our elected officials in Washington. Please join me by clicking here right now to send a message to your representatives in Congress before it is too late. You can make the difference.

Thank you for reading this note. I hope you'll make your voice heard today.

Sincerely,

Meg Whitman
President and CEO
eBay Inc.

P.S. If you have any questions about this issue, please contact us at government_relations@ebay.com.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't care who made it, I like it anyway:

And this one's pretty good too:

And don't forget this one:

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I've often wondered if I should bother putting my phone on the don't call list, apparently it works.

I am far less offended by telemarketers than by the inveterate spammers who seem to stop at nothing to take over my computer (last week, not only did I receive hundreds of e-mails I didn't want, but some one of these cyber villains took over my computer and began e-mailing 10 thousand of my closest friends).

I wouldn't exactly call the 'Do Not Call List' a private market solution, but it seems to be sort of a government negotiated truce in a telecom war. I'm waiting for the cyber market to find a more seamless and simple solution, before someone decides the government has to do it.

Posted by Brian Bishop at 06:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Lisa Snell spoke to the Illinois Coalition for School Choice on July 27, 2006.

Lisa Snell is director of education and child welfare at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets.

Lisa Snell has testified before the California State Legislature and numerous government agencies and has written more than a dozen policy studies on school violence, charter schools, and child advocacy centers. Snell traveled California educating voters about the pitfalls of the recently defeated universal preschool measure. After winning the battle against all odds in California, Snell is moving to new battlegrounds in Illinois and Wisconsin, where she is already scheduled to testify.

Snell is a regular contributor to School Reform News and Privatization Watch. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Orange County Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Newark Star-Ledger, and numerous other publications.

Prior to joining Reason, Snell taught public speaking and argumentation courses at California State University, Fullerton. She holds a Master of Arts in Communication from that university.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:16 PM | Permalink

We've been discussing whether or not corporate funding leads to biased research in light of recent attacks on Patrick Michaels and other global warming skeptics. This week, Newsweek published a fascinating interview on the same question in medical research, where corporate funding is much more pervasive.

Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel has also served on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and recently chaired a committee on conflicts of interest for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

NEWSWEEK: What do you make of all this? Should we be worried?
Ezekiel J. Emanuel: Yes, conflicts of interest are a real cause for concern, but we should avoid jumping to conclusions about how widespread and dangerous they are. It’s true that many clinical researchers have ties to the medical industry. The question is whether these conflicts distort the conduct of science. We know that industry financing affects the focus of clinical research—scientists are more likely to study a problem if funding is available—but there’s not much evidence that industry-sponsored research is less valid or rigorous. Eight to 10 different studies suggest it’s as good as research funded by government or foundations, and sometimes even more rigorous. The big drug and device makers have a lot of money at stake. They also have the FDA looking over their shoulders. They can’t afford to get things wrong.

But aren’t financial relationships bound to shade the way researchers view their data? If a company is helping you pay your kids’ tuition, aren’t you more likely to emphasize positive findings and downplay bad news?
We need more research on that question. But yes, the evidence we have suggests that researchers with financial ties to manufacturers tend to interpret their data more favorably when they’re studying those companies’ products.

In a recent analysis of psychiatric drug studies, researchers found that nearly 80 percent of those with corporate sponsors got positive results. The rate was only 48 percent for independent trials.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that the sponsored studies were biased. A drug company doesn’t fund a major clinical trial unless it strongly suspects the treatment is a good bet. Most investigational drugs get killed long before they make it into phase-2 and phase-3 clinical trials. If you were an industry executive and half of your human trials failed, you’d be out of work in a hurry.

So what’s the real worry?
Besides biased interpretation, I think it’s the issue of selective reporting. A lot of important clinical-trial findings never become public. A company with a product to promote will often publish its best results two or three times in different forms, but data that would provide a more complete picture of the risks and benefits don’t make it into the journals. Only the regulators see the raw data. This is where money really affects research results. We need to create open, public registries for trial data, and I think participation should be mandatory. Without them, scientists, doctors and the public are missing out on vital information.

The recent controversies have focused less on researchers’ actual conflicts than on the failure to disclose them. Why would prominent researchers keep failing to come clean?
It’s not always clear what counts as a conflict of interest. Most disclosure forms ask you to judge whether a relationship is relevant to the work you’re reporting. Does a brief consultancy I had three years ago affect my judgment today on a different drug or trial? Does a speech I gave for Merck bear on any work I do in any of the fields that Merck is involved in? And are all financial relationships equally suspect? If I’ve accepted research funding from a company to help determine whether a drug works, should that be viewed as personal income? Those are often judgment calls.

Scientists and journalists seem to play by different rules. Journalists try to avoid any financial ties to their sources.
There’s a difference, though. Journalists can avoid financial ties and still get their job done. Scientists often can’t. There was a time, back in the 1960s and 70s, when the National Cancer Institute made chemotherapy agents. Today, almost all of those compounds come from industry. If you want to study a promising new cancer drug, you’ve got to work with Genentech or Bristol-Myers Squibb or whichever company is making it. There’s no way around that. Many of our best treatments for cancer, heart disease and diabetes are products of private companies. If scientists stopped working with drug companies and stopped doing industry-supported research, the whole enterprise would suffer.

Are there steps we could take to safeguard the integrity of science without depriving researchers of the money and flexibility they need?
We’ll never eliminate conflicts of interest completely. The challenge is to come up with rules that are rigorous but able to work in a world where private drug companies are a fact of life. I think the ones we developed at ASCO provide a good model. Those rules go beyond disclosure of conflicts. They say that in big clinical trials, starting with phase 2, the principal investigator and the executive committee supervising the trial should have no personal financial interest in the outcome, meaning no financial relationship with an interested party within the past two years. Industry funds more clinical research than NIH, and we need to encourage that. For me, the key is to have untainted people running the most important trials—people who can make independent judgments and who are free to publish all of the data.

Posted by Michael Van Winkle at 02:00 PM | Permalink

One of the most enduring urban planning mantras is coordinating land use and transportation. While no one can dispute the desirability of coordinating land use and transport, the current strategies do exactly the opposite. That is because urban planning has been captured by an anti-automobile dogma that has the equation backwards. The idea is to densify and locate as much as possible adjacent to existing transportation infrastructure. The result, of course, is to significantly increase transportation demand.

However, the demand side is never addressed. When densities are intensified, more intense roadway systems are required. Failing to expand the roadways means that traffic congestion gets worse and that transport and land use have demonstrably not been coordinated. The planners may try to address the heightened demand by adding transit service or rail lines, but that is like attempting to reduce traffic congestion by increasing the frequency of garbage collection --- one has nothing to do with the other. The reality of the modern, large urban area is that people need to travel throughout to undertake their activities and to spur the economic growth that has produced an unprecedented expansion of jobs and affluence, while making poverty less of an issue than ever before. Transit is too inflexible to serve all but a small share of urban trips, whether in the United States or Western Europe.

Coordination of land use and transportation requires that sufficient practical transportation capacity be provided to support the land uses. If an area, such as Portland, seeks to densify, then it had better be prepared to expand and intensify its roadway system to maintain or improve reasonable traffic flows. Of course, Portland has failed to do that, has some of the worst traffic congestion among urban areas of its size and is losing businesses because of it.

Before today’s planners set about trying to coordinate land use and transport, they need to understand what it means. They have much to learn.

Posted by Wendell Cox at 10:25 AM | Permalink

So says a press release by the New Zealand Libertarian Party...

Posted by Wendell Cox at 05:34 AM | Permalink