Month: June 2005

The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy is Alive and Well

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Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D NV) and Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D IL) took the press to the woodshed for its coverage of DNC Chairman Howard Dean’s recent pronouncements, including his observations that Republicans are “liars,” “evil,” “corrupt,” “brain-dead,” and almost uniformly “White Christians” who have “never made an honest living in their lives.” Sen. Durbin attributed the continuing media attention to the baneful influence of the right wing and Fox News, and chided the more sensible parts of the media for following along, instead of running more stories about all the wonderful things the Democrats would like to do for us. He probably wouldn’t mind seeing more ink “invested” in Abu Ghraib, WMDs, the Downing Street memo, and Guantanamo, either. Or the Michael Jackson trial. It’s not polite to stare. Or to laugh and point.

If they get rid of the good doctor, I hope Sen. Durbin is available.

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Exhausted blogger hatchlings rest on the sand as two of their nest mates fight to emerge from their shells.

LEGAL Immigration: Bargain-Priced at $9 Billion ($100 / Family)

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It is good to put a price tag on things, for clarity.

I did a little Googling and I found out what the Israelis are paying per-kilometer for their walls around the West Bank and Gaza. At the same cost per km, the USA could build a wall from the Gulf to the Pacific for $9 billion. That is only a ballpark estimate, but it is certainly not an insurmountably large sum. We could get a large increment of national security by foregoing a few ships and aircraft. Totally worth it. We have cross-border gangs operating which are very serious security threats. Wall them out.

I am a great believer in large amounts of LEGAL immigration. We have Julian Simon on our masthead for a reason.

But the USA needs to get a grip on what is currently happening along our southern border. Securing that border is an absolutely necessary start. Well-appointed and well-guarded gate areas would allow the passage of legitimate commerce and personal travel. But we should make a decision as a people to obtain control of the border. The liberals like the idea of lots of illegals whom they can funnel benefits to and whom they can turn into Democrats. On the GOP side, the business and farming community likes the dirt cheap labor that cannot ask for benefits or be unionized and that cannot sue when injured or poisoned. This unholy alliance needs to be slapped aside. Most of us have no liberal guilt about illegal immigrants, and the people who get a commercial advantage out of employing illegal workers get no pity or sympathy from me, either. As to people in California who will have to pay more to have their yards kept pretty, the worlds smallest violin remains silent for them, too.

OK, so are you ready to cough up $100 per American household to wall off the border and allow only LEGAL cross-border traffic?

Will someone make this a campaign issue in 2008, ya think?

Quote of the Day

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You go to an Italian wine town and think, “Wow! Now I’m in the real Italy!” But then you realize the winery is owned by Germans, the town is inhabited by English vacationers, and the people who clean the dishes in the French-owned restaurant are all Romanians. The Italians who used to live there have had to move to poorer towns, maybe along some highway near fast-food restaurants.

From: Raymond Aron and the End of Europe, by Christopher Caldwell.

Quiz question: How does this comment apply to our recent discussions about the EU?

Mutual Fund Scandal

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The first verdict in the market-timing scandal has come in with an acquittal on 27 accounts and a mistrial on the remaining four (the jury was deadlocked at 11-1 to acquit). The broker had been accused of helping a hedge fund, Canary Capital Partners, place trades to buy mutual fund shares after the 4:00 PM cutoff and still get the pre-cutoff price.

This is the first of NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s cases to go to a jury. If he brought his strongest case first, this is not good news for the ambitious Spitzer.

More background information on the mutual fund scandal can be found here and here.

As a rule of thumb, if you were already a smart investor, you probably had little or nothing to worry about. Every one of the funds involved in the scandals was sold through intermediaries (brokers, financial planners, etc.) for fees or commissions. Not one of the no-load funds was involved at all, and these usually have lower fees. The largest no-load fund families include Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price. Investing on your own means doing your own research, but if you work alone, you can be sure there is no conflict of interest. Or as a great merchant puts it, “Suffer a little, save a lot.”