It’s not only markets in capital and goods that should be free. It’s markets in labor, too. What’s immigration, at bottom? It’s a voluntary and peaceful transaction between employer and employee. Government interference in these many transactions is presumptuous, oppressive of individuals, and stifling of economic growth.
One hears, more often since Gov. Romney’s defeat, that the GOP regrets its recent, strident anti-immigration views. (Funny, too, that Reagan and Kemp, among others, would have rejected policies even half so restrictive as the ones that Romney and Santorum advocated in 2012.)
Whatever the motivation, it’s to America’s benefit if Republicans abandon their anti-market opposition to immigration.
For it all, libertarians can say that we were right a generation ago, right last year, and that we’re right now: free immigration is both morally and productively better than restrictive alternatives. If all the world were to declare otherwise tomorrow, we’d not be disproved.
It’s a simple question, although to some it may sound like a trick one. It’s not meant to be.
There’s also a simple answer: I don’t know – and neither does anyone else.
We know that settlers arrived here in 1837, but our part of the world had its name, and human inhabitants, long before those first families arrived here. Before English, Norwegian, and German-speaking settlers walked these prairies, this place saw generation after generation from among the original peoples on this continent. They were born, worked for sustenance, raised families, and died here. Those pre-Columbian inhabitants long preceded even the Potawatomi.
One could unpersuasively argue that Whitewater wasn’t Whitewater until someone spoke that name in English, or that it wasn’t Whitewater until settlers established American laws and institutions, but to do so is evasive quibbling. Our forefathers weren’t the first people here, any more than some of them were truly first people on the east coast, despite early settlement during colonial times.
The written accounts of Whitewater’s residents are a mere fraction of the full number lives, lived generation after generation, over at least thousand years.
We’ve a long past behind us, of so much time, and so many generations, and it is – as it should be – properly humbling.
Sometimes one is both motivated and diligent in one’s efforts –
I’ve a few regular features at my sites, and am pleased to add another: cartoons from Mark Anderson, whose creations have been published in major magazines, for corporate communications, and as greeting cards. One of his cartoons will appear on its own at least weekly at my websites, and others will appear within posts.
Whitewater’s Tuesday will be mostly sunny, with a high of twenty-nine. We’ll have 9h 23m of sunlight, 10h 26m of daylight, with a waxing crescent moon.
On this day in 1967, the Packers played and won their first Super Bowl:
LOS ANGLES, Jan. 15 — Bryan Bartlett (Bart) Starr, the quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, led his team to a 35-10 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs today in the first professional football game between the champions of the National and American Leagues.
Doubt about the outcome disappeared in the third quarter when Starr’s pretty passes made mere Indians out of the American League Chiefs and Green Bay scored twice.
Those 14 points stretched Green Bay’s lead to 28-10 and during the final quarter many of the spectators in the crowd of 63,036 left Memorial Coliseum which had been only two-thirds filled.
The outcome served to settle the curiosity of the customers, who paid from $6 to $12 for tickets, and a television audience estimated at 60 million….
Google-a-Day asks readers to field a baseball question: “What was the jersey number of the center-fielder who led the Phillies to their fifth National League pennant in 1993?”
Our week starts with sunny skies and a high of twenty. There will be 9h 22m of sunlight, and 10h 24m of daylight, for Whitewater today. Tomorrow will be one minute longer.
How big do sharks get? Really big:
The city’s Planning Commission meets tonight at 6 PM, and her Library Board at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1784, a war formally ends:
….Continental Congress ratifies the Second Treaty of Paris, ending the War for Independence.
In the document, which was known as the Second Treaty of Paris because the Treaty of Paris was also the name of the agreement that had ended the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain officially agreed to recognize the independence of its 13 former colonies as the new United States of America.
In addition, the treaty settled the boundaries between the United States and what remained of British North America. U.S. fishermen won the right to fish in the Grand Banks, off the Newfoundland coast, and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Both sides agreed to ensure payment to creditors in the other nation of debts incurred during the war and to release all prisoners of war. The United States promised to return land confiscated during the war to its British owners, to stop any further confiscation of British property and to honor the property left by the British army on U.S. shores, including Negroes or slaves. Both countries assumed perpetual rights to access the Mississippi River.
Despite the agreement, many of these issues remained points of contention between the two nations in the post-war years. The British did not abandon their western forts as promised and attempts by British merchants to collect outstanding debts from Americans were unsuccessful as American merchants were unable to collect from their customers, many of whom were struggling farmers.
Google-a-Day poses a question about art: “What American museum paid $6.9 million to exhibit artwork on loan from the Louvre from 2006-2009?”
….grants a papal sanction to the military order known as the Knights Templar, declaring it to be an army of God.
Led by the Frenchman Hughes de Payens, the Knights Templar organization was founded in 1118. Its self-imposed mission was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land during the Crusades, the series of military expeditions aimed at defeating Muslims in Palestine. The Templars took their name from the location of their headquarters, at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. For a while, the Templars had only nine members, mostly due to their rigid rules. In addition to having noble birth, the knights were required to take strict vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. In 1127, new promotional efforts convinced many more noblemen to join the order, gradually increasing its size and influence.
While the individual knights were not allowed to own property, there was no such restriction on the organization as a whole, and over the years many rich Christians gave gifts of land and other valuables to support the Knights Templar. By the time the Crusades ended unsuccessfully in the early 14th century, the order had grown extremely wealthy, provoking the jealousy of both religious and secular powers. In 1307, King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V combined to take down the Knights Templar, arresting the grand master, Jacques de Molay, on charges of heresy, sacrilege and Satanism. Under torture, Molay and other leading Templars confessed and were eventually burned at the stake. Clement dissolved the Templars in 1312, assigning their property and monetary assets to a rival order, the Knights Hospitalers. In fact, though, Philip and his English counterpart, King Edward II, claimed most of the wealth after banning the organization from their respective countries.
The modern-day Catholic Church has admitted that the persecution of the Knights Templar was unjustified and claimed that Pope Clement was pressured by secular rulers to dissolve the order. Over the centuries, myths and legends about the Templars have grown, including the belief that they may have discovered holy relics at Temple Mount, including the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant or parts of the cross from Christ’s crucifixion. The imagined secrets of the Templars have inspired various books and movies, including the blockbuster novel and film The Da Vinci Code.
Today marks the birth of the ‘oldest station in the nation’:
1922 – WHA Radio Founded
On this date the call letters of experimental station 9XM in Madison were replaced by WHA. This station dates back to 1917, making it “The oldest station in the nation.” [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers, edited by Sarah Davis McBride]
It’s history, too, from Google-a-Day: “At the time of signing, what was the title of the man who is the first of the two names in the name of the 1901 treaty that nullified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty?”
It’s a breezy day for the Whippet City, with west winds of 15 to 20 mph, and gusts as high as 30 mph. The mercury will hit a high of about forty-five, then fall to around thirty-one by the late afternoon. We’ll have a strong likelihood of snow overnight, of about two inches.
Much of Holmes’ appeal has always been his amazing mind — how he is able to solve a seemingly insurmountable mystery through simple observation and deep thought. Wouldn’t we all like to borrow from his bag of mental tricks?
Just imagine the possibilities if you put Holmes’ brain power to use in the workplace, the classroom or social situations. That’s the premise of Maria Konnikova’s fascinating new book, “Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.” Konnikova, a columnist for Scientific American and a doctoral student in psychology, explores the latest science to dissect the inner workings of the iconic detective’s mind.
More about the book is available at her CNN interview and Konnikova’s website. Other work of hers is available at her blog and Scientific American.
Interesting, insightful, and simply fun.
On this day in 1932, the first woman won election to the U.S. Senate:
Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. With the support of Huey Long, a powerful senator from Louisiana, Caraway was elected to the seat. In 1938, she was reelected. After failing to win renomination in 1944, she was appointed to the Federal Employees Compensation Commission by President Franklin Roosevelt.
Although she was the first freely elected female senator, Caraway was preceded in the Senate by Rebecca Latimer Felton, who was appointed in 1922 to fill a vacancy but never ran for election. Jeannette Rankin, elected to the House of Representatives as a pacifist from Montana in 1917, was the first woman to ever sit in Congress.
On this day in 1864, the American Civil War took a Wisconsin regiment to Mexico:
1864 – (Civil War) Engagement at Matamoras, Mexico
The 20th Wisconsin Infantry took part in a battle in Matamoras, Mexico. They crossed from Brownsville, Texas, to rescue the American consul in Matamoras when he was caught in a local uprising between two opposing Mexican forces.
Google-a-Day asks about a British naval tradition: “What is the term for the traditional ritual by which officers in the UK’s Royal Navy are retired?”
Property crimes, of theft or vandalism, are inherently wrong: they deprive hardworking people of the products of their own efforts, to the benefit of the dishonest, destructive, or shiftless.
When those crimes come with a threat of personal violence against their victims, they are even more serious. (Here one speaks of actual, verifiable threats, not imagined or tenuously inferred ones.)
At our Walgreen’s someone made a demand for prescription drugs; he may have also threatened violence to obtain them, although that fact has not be disclosed, by newspaper accounts (1, 2) of Whitewater’s robbery.
In press releases from other cities where similar crimes have occurred recently, some of those police departments have disclosed that the robbers threatened or implied violence by claiming to be armed. The Janesville, Fitchburg, and Madison police departments issued press releases about similar robberies at Walgreen’s pharmacies. The Delavan Police Department also asked for assistance through the press for help with such a robbery.
Of those four other cities, three – Fitchburg, Madison, and Delavan – stated that the robber implied or threatened force. (The Janesville press release makes no mention of a threat, but does state that no weapons were displayed during the robbery.)
Yet, of this one can be confident: at no time should anyone – let alone an official of the city – suggest or encourage, as in paragraphs 22-26 of a newspaper interview, that an ordinary resident should directly approach or question someone who might fit the robber’s description or during similar circumstances to these pharmacy robberies.
Notifying trained authorities promptly but discretely will always be the most prudent course; anything else is both uncertain and ill-considered. One might successfully act otherwise, but it’s not sensible to encourage that risk, generally, among residents.
Despite trillions annually, and more lawful authority than any human institution in all history, the U.S. federal government is still too craven to discipline even one malodorous employee:
The Social Security Administration officially reprimanded an employee whom colleagues accused of continuously “passing gas and releasing an unpleasant odor” that created a “hostile work environment.”
After the Smoking Gun posted the reprimand letter online, the agency said it withdrew its disciplinary action against the flatulent worker.
“When senior management became aware of the reprimand it was immediately rescinded,” agency spokeswoman Dorothy J. Clark said….
If ever a case cried out for a swift response, here it was. This fetid staffer from the Baltimore office of the Social Security Administration has as many as nine ‘episodes’ per day, nauseating colleagues and befouling the air of Maryland’s largest city.
Worse, the worker’s proposed remedies have proved wholly ineffectual — useless against the prodigious stench:
The man told a supervisor in July that he would start turning on a fan after releasing bodily odors in his work space, but the manager explained that such action would only “cause the smell to spread and worsen the air quality in the module,” according to the reprimand letter.
In August, the man said he would purchase Gas X to help deal with his problem, the letter said. But the log shows he continued to release gas regularly for the next several months.
His supervisor concluded that the worker had the ability for, but chose against, control over this problem.
The sad affair may be the strongest case for government downsizing of the last twenty-five or thirty years’ time. No public paycheck should subsidize pollution, and surely not of this scale.
