Zero Tolerance

Have you seen this one? A ten-year-old girl in Ocala, Florida, was arrested and stuck with felony weapons charges after bringing a small steak knife to school and using it...to cut her steak.

I gotta tell you, folks, this whole Zero Tolerance issue really boils down to the fact that our schools are run by the government. When you look at private schools, there are almost no instances of ZT policies to be found. The reason for that is simple: market pressure forces these private schools to be more judicious in their handling of incidents. If the parents of the kids in a private school don't like how the administration handles incidents like this, they can easily pull their kid - along with their tuition money - out of the school.

These market pressures don't exist in the government education system. Public schools are funded through tax money that is forcibly taken from the local residents, regardless of their use of the school, so there is no incentive for the school to provide any real service. Bad teachers are effectively impossible to fire, local elections are almost universally ignored (causing bad incumbent school board members to easily win reelection with vote totals in the double digits), and the people don't really have the option of withholding their funding in order to effect change.

Now, if more people could homeschool their kids or send them to private school, we could at least minimize the number of kids ruined by these bad 'educators'. Unfortunately, due to the massive amount of money we pay in taxes and the value of our dollar going into the toilet, not many people can afford to either pay private school tuition or have one parent stay home to handle the schooling. Most families in America are forced to have both parents working full time just to make ends meet - which is understandable considering that the average wage earner works nearly half the year just to pay their tax bill! That may sound high, but when you take into account federal, state, and sometimes local income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gas tax, cigarette tax (for smokers), car registrations and licensing fees, and all of the other money that has to go to government at all levels, it's about spot on.

Add to all that the hidden inflation tax which hits the lower and middle class the hardest, destroys the value of any savings they might have, and causes them to run faster and faster just to stay in one place, and it's no wonder that we have such huge problems with crime, drugs, and destroyed families! People turn to crime because it frequently pays more than any honest work job they can get after exiting our useless education system, turn to drugs to escape the horrible realities we face every day, and can't hold families together because they have no time outside of working (to support the ever-growing weight of the state) to spend together and bond.

And that's why I support Ron Paul.

Don't shut that gate!

I heard a great point while listening to a back episode of Free Talk Live today (specifically, the show from 2007-06-30) - "illegal" immigration is a welfare problem, not an immigration problem. If you put out a bowl of milk every night for the stray cats in your neighborhood, don't complain when the strays from other neighborhoods start turning up for the free meal. Of course they're going to come for the handouts - if it's there, and there's a reasonably low chance of getting caught, there's no compelling reason not to. If you take away the free food, the strays will stop showing up and learn to procure their own food (or go somewhere else that offers handouts).

The real problem here, then, is not immigration itself, but our welfare state. For my part, I don't much care who comes to the United States, as long as they're willing to work and contribute. The people who come to this country for a free ride, however, are indeed a problem. I have enough of a problem with my tax dollars going to support lazy American citizens - the idea of lazy people from other countries showing up to take even more of the money stolen from us by the taxman is even worse. As far as people who legitimately can't work, there are private charitable organizations who are able to do a much better job than the government can (which, really, isn't all that hard). These people, however, are relatively very few. With things like the Internet and telecommuting, you'd really have to be bad off for there to be truly no job you could do.

As for the immigrants who do show up here to work and provide better for their families, I say more power to 'em. So many people complain that "They're taking our jobs!" but, really, they're not. They're just willing to work hard for minimum wage (or lower, in some cases), because they understand that a good work ethic is more important than a good flat-screen TV or a good sports car. For these people, the reason they come illegally is because it's so ridiculously hard and expensive to go through all the red tape and fees in our current system.

I apologize for the cliché, but this one happens to be true - this country was built on the backs of immigrants from all over the world. Unfortunately, with every wave there has been discrimination from the bulk of the citizenry. Many of these people forget that they themselves are only 2 or 3 generations removed from immigrants themselves. Since when does being born on one side of an imaginary line make a person better or more worthy than those born on the other side of that imaginary line?

So, taking these points into consideration, what reason could we really have to stop people from coming here from other countries to work? More workers means more production, more production means more wealth to be spread around, more wealth to be spread around is better for everybody. I'd very much like to hear from anybody who can give me a good reason why we really need to limit and regulate immigration, as opposed to just eliminating welfare.