patrick.net

What’s important in your life is you yourself. How other people fare shouldn’t matter, as long as they don’t directly harm you. In theory, of course.

Exactly.

The worst credit risks in the US are concentrated in Appalachia, which last I checked had a fairly low concentration of illegal immigrants.

But white midwestern farmers don’t fit the reactionary world view of societal free loaders. Witness what is set to soon become the largest government subsidy program (of funds directly distributed to individuals) in modern world history: corn-based-ethanol.

I am no fan of corn-based ethanol (which arguably consumes more energy than it "produces", so is actually more of an energy sink, not a viable energy source).

But... to address Randy's main point here: the fact that lots of bad loans are being made to poor, white Midwesterns, or that white midwestern farmers are receiving more government subsidies than they should does *not* excuse lenders for knowingly providing mortgages to illegals here. And --more importantly-- it does not excuse our so-called "leaders" from not enforcing the law and doing something about it.

As HelloKitty pointed out, if we're just going to selectively and arbitrarily enforce laws, based on whatever the banksters/CEOs decide they want the law to be *today*, then why should anybody care what the law says? When a large % of the population can regularly break the law and suffer no ill consequences (or even be rewarded for breaking it) what happens to our hallowed "rule of law"?

The most foolish thing you can do in a society where the law means nothing is to follow the law.

So, banks are abandoning the FICO Score system, and basing their decision to lend money to illegal immigrants, on their own appraisals of character, and previous illegal, or at least questionable activity? Please point to one of these stories.

How about this one?

What’s important in your life is you yourself. How other people fare shouldn’t matter, as long as they don’t directly harm you. In theory, of course.

Exactly.

Not quite. There are externalities to consider, the consequences of which can be just as important or even more important than how something "affects me directly". We are not isolated individuals living autonomously in our own personal fiefdoms, with our actions having zero impact on other people. As the Depeche Mode song goes, "everything counts in large amounts", and harmful actions repeated on a large enough scale can have consequences that impacts everyone.

How many regular readers of this blog have been priced out of the housing market in the past several years --and probably will be for years to come, simply because the Fed, Congress and the GSEs decided to engineer a housing bubble? How many "individual" flippers or $0-down NINJAs loans does it take to triple house prices in your neighborhood?

I don't have to directly participate in or be victimized by fraud and identity theft for it to affect me personally.

A (perhaps handsome, perhaps not, just like Larry Page) google multi-multi-millionaire comes along and wants to take her away. She shows some interest. Would you let her go? You know if you truly love her you would release her from the chain and let her have a better life. Think about it.

Other than magick, you do not have many legal options to keep her from leaving you anyway.

C’mon. Be manly. Some men would fight to keep her, i.e., by going into startups themselves or by digging up dirt on that lucky guy.

Fight? How? It is a battle that cannot be won. Digging up dirt (short of pretexting) sounds good on paper but he can do the same to you.

Randy, I'm surprised. I didn't know about the au pairs but I do know that Russian girls especially will even fake a marriage. Again, who cares as long as they are hot.

I do know that Russian girls especially will even fake a marriage.

Many people fake marriages. IIRC marriage fraud is a felony.

I am not a lawyer.

Steveoh, BTW I dig the handle, I have to say that being Mexican is almost an ethnicity because other Latins look down on them as well. The most offensive thing you can say to a Puerto Rican or a Venezuelan is to mistake them for being Mexican. Another fun stat is that there are more Puerto Ricans in NY than Puerto Rico, and they milk the system too but it's a territory so no one minds.

Steveoh, BTW I dig the handle, I have to say that being Mexican is almost an ethnicity because other Latins look down on them as well. The most offensive thing you can say to a Puerto Rican or a Venezuelan is to mistake them for being Mexican. Another fun stat is that there are more Puerto Ricans in NY than Puerto Rico, and they milk the system too but it's a territory so no one minds.

Different class segments. No need to complain. Greencards aren’t all that precious. I hope that’s not something that you prize.

And I hope you understood that I was not talking about "prizing the green cards".

Are you angry that con artists made tons of money from the dot com bubble and RE bubble?

Yes. I am a very different person than you.

HARM

We agree that there should be a net *reduction* in the number of laws. We are approaching a level where
a) it is impossible to comply with all laws simultaneously as a practical matter
b) it is unwise to even try to do (a)

Laws have always been unevenly directed, however. That's why we have judges and juries. The law was never intended to be an automated, binary "black and white" thing, despite what people often scream in these types of arguments. There have always been degrees of guilt. In some areas there are even still degrees of guilt in capital crimes. And I'm a rare type who doesn't think that's always a bad thing, though it is a bad thing when it becomes a technical loophole mechanism. But "zero-tolerance" bullshit is just as bad. Zero-tolerance equates to a bad Stallone movie where his first name was "Judge".

Let's ignore the broader issues related to immigration, legal and illegal for the moment. Let's just deal with the part associated with bad loans, defaults, home prices, and real property:

In this case, which entities are most guilty of doing the worst societal damage. Who is causing people like you and I the worst pain? Whether a law happens to exist or not -- which itself is largely arbitrary in our system -- who put the biggest footprint on the back of the responsible American saver? In my assessment, illegals from the south are but a minor weight in this societal crime. Midwestern farmers using politics to steal from the public tax till and subsidize their ownership of millions of acres of land at our expense is a bit larger. And dwarfing both of those are the institutions that lend out this money knowing someone else, namely you and I, will foot the bill for the fallout while they keep the profits.

I know, there's no law against that. But I'm far less concerned in debates like this about what happens to be legal or illegal at this moment, and I'm more concerned about how things *should* be. We're talking ideals and abstractions, not specifics. Constraining these types of arguments to legal/illegal now would have also meant one couldn't have championed other changes we now see as right and just (at least most here do) like emancipation and suffrage.

My whole reason for getting irritated has nothing to do with whether loans are being made to illegals, and this is bad. Of course, and of course. That's a straw man. But as others have said, this is just part of the decay that has caused this whole bubble. This just gets people uppity because it touches nerves, not the least of which are racial. But the original author did this on purpose, in my not so humble opinion. I think this because I don't buy her whole accounting. She was just stirring shit up, which takes away important focus from fingering and punishing the true enabling offenders in this case.

It will be fighting about stuff like this that gives cover to our esteemed puny leaders as they bail out the corporations & banks, cover the elite, and sneak in some tax increases, all while claiming they're defending normal working folk.

Not quite. There are externalities to consider, the consequences of which can be just as important or even more important than how something “affects me directly”. We are not isolated individuals living autonomously in our own personal fiefdoms, with our actions having zero impact on other people.

I can say "Exactly" to that :-)

Oh man, this site is a hoot:

http://www.429truth.com/

Oliver Stone needs to make a movie about this.

It will be fighting about stuff like this that gives cover to our esteemed puny leaders as they bail out the corporations & banks, cover the elite, and sneak in some tax increases, all while claiming they’re defending normal working folk.

Ok, now I kind of see your point here. Yes, I agree that the "big picture" is --and always has been-- what the government itself has done to create and perpetuate the bubble. The "illegals buying houses with fraudulent documents" issue a mighty small subset of a much bigger issue, and mainly a consequence, not a cause. If some are trying to use this as a red herring/diversion away from what should be the proper focus of public anger (those f*cking a$$holes in our own government), then I totally agree with you.

I do have to say that when I had rentals I never had a section 8 inquiry from someone who did not sound Spanish. I hope you guys appreciate the fact that I never did, nor will I ever rent to a section 8.

God that graphic is funny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition_187

Wow... what a complicated backstory:

Governor Pete Wilson was a prominent supporter. Opponents included State Senator Art Torres, who referred to Prop. 187 as "the last gasp of white America in California." The proposition came before voters on the November 8, 1994 general election, where it received 59% of the vote. It became law the next day. While its prominent advocates were political conservatives, some liberals (such as Los Angeles-based radio talk-show host Tom Leykis) also favored it, on the grounds that making life more difficult for illegal immigrants might result in fewer of them entering the state, creating labor shortages which could drive up wages for the lowest-paid workers. Meanwhile, some prominent conservatives, like businessman and failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz, opposed the initiative.

There is one section of the 15 by Lake Hodges that would bring the whole N Co of San Diego to a hault if it were compromised. There are NO surface streets to get around this bottleneck. I'm just reading that 4/29 stuff, never thought it was deliberate, but I have thought that a deliberate attack on this particular stretch would do to San Diego what that fire did to SF.

The best compromise is a combination of guest worker program, elimination of minimum wage, and strong immigration enforcement.

The first two items will make the last one politically acceptable.

We should put a sombrero and a black mustache on that alien, heh heh heh.

http://www.429truth.com/

:lol:

The most foolish thing you can do in a society where the law means nothing is to follow the law.

HARM, Now ain't that the truth. Unfortunately, we're more or less in that situation when it comes to both the housing/credit bubble (not partaking in the free sketchy money) and illegal immigration.

Peter, all of those good suggestions are for naught if immigration policy doesn't start with a leak proof border. I can't figure out what political forces are at work but something as obvious as this somehow doesn't get general support, and it wouldn't even cost that much. It really pisses me off.

I worked in England for a summer and the visa form asked me to indicate my race. The choices were:

white
black
asian
irish

I kid you not. I felt like an Arab arriving at JFK.

Patrick

Betty is a piece of crap.

these are supposedly "very very dear" friends of hers, yet her letter if full of venom for these friends. And she seems to be debating ratting them out on some sort of loan fraud. Do you know betty that before the patriot act, you didn't need a social to buy a house? and maybe they had a cousin or friend buy the house, in which case there is no identity theft. YOU didn't see the loan docs, so you really don't know anything... But we can see how you think, and I feel sorry that these friends have someone as pathetic as you for a friend.

Their home buying is non of your business. In fact, I speak fluent spanish and portuguese, and my wife is from venezuela. I can assure you if you anybody asked me how i got my social or how i afford my homes, I would tell them/you mind your own damn business.

HARM,
I am no fan of corn-based ethanol (which arguably consumes more energy than it “produces”, so is actually more of an energy sink, not a viable energy source).
I will argue that it is net energy positive (although not by much). It is important also to note, that ethanol production is mainly a means of converting coal and natural gas to a readily transportable liquid fuel that can be used in todays vehicles. In another words, even if it is energy negative, there is still a case to be made for it (although it will have nasty CO2 emissions). I tend to favor UC Berkeley's meta-study which is a spreadsheet model that synthesizes the data from 6 independent ethanol studies. I am very curious how this will effect the corn-based food industrial complex which produces many of todays processed foods and animal feed. I know some farmers are already are starting to complain about higher feed prices. Hmmm.... grass for grazing -- how old school -- is starting to look better and better.

Hey Skibum, was watching some YouTube yesterday, and saw what we were talking about. Literally dozens of rich foreigners going to China for organ transplants knowing full well they are harvested from executions. I can twist this to the current topic because it is funny how we object to foreigners coming here and taking social services, but somehow it is ok because we have money to go overseas where the death penalty is literally being enforced by supply and demand of organs. I am getting more and more careful who I look down my nose at.

Peter, all of those good suggestions are for naught if immigration policy doesn’t start with a leak proof border.

I somewhat agree. This is why the border needs to be militarized. I still think interior enforcement is a good deterrent though, although it also leads to privacy issues.

I can’t figure out what political forces are at work but something as obvious as this somehow doesn’t get general support, and it wouldn’t even cost that much. It really pisses me off.

Politically, there is no way enforcement can be carried out without some kind of compromise for businesses and illegals. The guest worker program is necessarily. Employers can still have access to labor and illegals can be legalized as non-immigrants for now.

I'm all for guest workers as you know, I'm talking more about the wimps trying to win a voting block by backing off of border enforecment. Amnesty is my new litmus test for candidates.

Malcolm, look at it this way. Is it ethical to waste organs from executed prisoners if they could be used to save people?

The choices were:

white
black
asian
irish

So in Britain, "Irish" is considered "other than white". Wow.

Peter, I've concluded the same thing, however, China is the kind of place that will up the death penalty if there is enough demand for organs. This makes it an unethical practice.

So in Britain, “Irish” is considered “other than white”. Wow.

Perhaps there is a choice for A and D, and All of the above.

Patrick, you're cracking me up.

I can't believe it, they made me feel like a nigger, how dare they?

Peter, I’ve concluded the same thing, however, China is the kind of place that will up the death penalty if there is enough demand for organs.

If they merely speed up execution for existing convictions, it is all fine. But if they convict more people that would not have been sentenced to death, we are in a moral gray zone (80% gray).

I went to England for a year in high school, and yes, the same polock jokes are told about the Irish, but I had no idea that they literally distinguish on forms.

Peter, it's getting that bad.

Politically, there is no way enforcement can be carried out without some kind of compromise for businesses and illegals. The guest worker program is necessarily. Employers can still have access to labor and illegals can be legalized as non-immigrants for now.

I agree there's no practical way to deport 10-15 million people to their countries of origin. 30-some years of deliberate non-enforcement has definitely had an impact. Even so, any "compromise" measure that wants my support has to start with two things:
1) Real border security starting now --period.
2) Violations against people/employers who hire illegals must be enforced going forward. We basically don't fine or prosecute anyone for doing this now, which means zero disincentive for them to keep doing it.

Malcolm,

That doesn't surprise me about those who go to China knowing they'll be getting the kidney/heart/whatever from a prisoner. Humans will go to desperate measures when their lives are at stake. It's a sick form of supply and demand, enabled by the Chinese government.

Where I disagree with Peter P is that the ethical question is beyond "wast(ing) organs from executed prisoners." This places a moral hazard on the government to execute more and more prisoners for money.

To get back to the immigration issue, that's my beef with all this talk about reform - most proposed solutions present a severe moral hazard. Come here illegally because we'll let you stay in the end. Same with the credit cards, car insurance for illegals. Wrong.