Immigration Policy

The biggest potential pitfall the Democrats could have in Congress is if they allow the protectionist wing to rule and approach bipartisanship as an opportunity to ally with the far-right protectionists to hurt immigrants and try to strip them of their rights. The danger here is that the bigotry and unintelligence of the anti-immigrant groups could be unintentionally strengthened by labor groups trying to reduce the wage impact of immigration.

Undoubtedly, there is a small but politically sensitive impact of immigration. However, the way to deal with this is not to rail against 'illegal immigrants taking our jobs' or 'freeloading immigrants steal our tax dollars' or 'illegal immigrants take our money and send it out of the country'. The approach is to recognize that immigrants, particularly from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, are coming to the country and we should welcome them with our minimum wage, relatively low tax burden and stringent working condition regulations, providing them with the carrot and save the carrot for business that violate these regulations.

Immigrants will not significantly affect employment or wages if they are properly documented and should not all be lumped as 'criminals' for breaking the overly strict immigration laws that only let in a fraction of those who want to come in. If we open the borders and keep track of those who enter (perhaps in exchange for some benefits such as possibility of citizenship or Unemployment Insurance or the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits), then the 'border enforcement' work will be focused on those with harmful intent.

The issue of remittances is silly (although I have heard suggestions that it is somehow 'robbing our country'). The money remitted to countries-of-origin is money earned by the workers and has proven to be a very efficient way to assist with development because there aren't the administrative costs associated with filtering through (sometimes corrupt) governments.

In the end, the U.S. has been successful despite occasional bouts of opposition to immigrants and the rise of hate groups relying on ignorance and flirtations with bigotry towards those who are difference. Immigrants are a huge part of this success and are one of the factors that separates us from Europe, which has committed itself at least in the short term to 'Fortress Europe' (Japan is even more xenophobic). Proper documentation for immigrants will allow them to accomplish their goals of helping themselves and their families without resorting to trying to keep them out or simply depriving them of services. The latter policy is one of ghettoization and is the most harmful and potentially beneficial to xenophobes and racists.

Priorities

All the focus in the past few weeks has been on Iraq and extricating ourselves from an untenable situation. This is important...vital even, but it is a situation that will require the Bush Administration to change (it is their problem after all). The Baker report suggested that American troops be out of Iraq by early 2008, which I think is too late. There is no point in holding out until 2008 to make a hasty withdrawal from Iraq. The endgame will be the same regardless, but the losses of U.S troops between now and then could be substantial and even one will be one too many. The real focus for the Democrats should be on the domestic front. Health care and crime, those are the issues the Democrats should tackle (with a war on tax cuts in their too, but that's another post).

Time magazine has two interesting articles, one on health care and one on crime.

The healthcare article focuses primarily on the growth of specialist outpatient clinics and their detrimental role on traditional hospitals. The outpatient clinics take the specialist work (the most profitable) and leave the more expensive inpatient and emergency work along with the uninsured patients. This causes hospitals to lose a lot of money they use to subsidize the less profitable aspects of their business. This is bad for health care, particularly for the less well off, but it is an added incentive to introduce single-payer, national health insurance. Keep the hospitals reserved for immediate care and those without the money to pay for the the specialized care and fund everybody. This would allow the government to pay for health insurance for all by funding the hospitals that never turned anyone away, while separating the high-income people, who would go to the specialized outpatient care. The only (and primary) challenge for the government would be to keep the care at a high enough level to provide quality health coverage for all. But, if you provide health insurance for all, there will be a natural public constituency to keep the pressure on politicians to provide adequate funding to keep the public insurance running. The hospitals could run as they are, but they would be removed the (very large) burden of providing care to those who could not afford treatment and work towards illness prevention as a way to make it sustainable in the long run (currently poor people cannot afford prevention and just show up in the emergency rooms when they need care, greatly increasing the costs to the hospitals through no fault of their own). If that was instituted, be prepared to see money freed up from hospitals and government programs like Medicaid.

In terms of crime, the answer is clear. Since Bush came into office, the Community-Oriented Policing Services (COPS) budget has been cut by 45% (according to the Time article). Money is being doled out to homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and tax cuts to the rich) at the expense of policing efforts that were significantly reducing crime in the 1990s, particularly in mid-sized cities that rely on federal aid for a significant portion of their budgets. The result has been (surprise) a resurgence in crime in mid-sized cities. The COPS program worked, not through enforcement, per se, but by integrating the police force into the communities in which crime was most prevalent. This gained the communities' trust and created an environment in which the community was best able to assist police in fighting crime. Crime was down because the community was involved, not because the police arrested more people, more prisons were built or because potheads went to jail for longer. The community is where the crime prevention occurs. The police are a last resort, so where the community begins to trust the police, they will be more likely to help the police fight the criminals. The 'war on drugs' created more criminals than it deterred.

Medicare drug prices

One of the first priorities of the Democrats once they regain control of Congress is to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. The Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage bill passed with an express prohibition on Medicare negotiating prices with drug manufacturers. What this created was an implicit subsidy of pharmaceutical companies. There was no reason for the plan to do this except to provide a hand out to the pharmaceutical companies. The idea of using bargaining power to lower drug prices is not new or limited to government agencies; Walmart announced it was negotiating $4 drug prices based on it's size as a purchaser. The Veterans Administration and many European governments and the Canadian government also negotiate significantly lower prices with pharmaceutical companies.

If the Democrats accomplish this legislation, which 77% of Americans support, it would give them a good boost in their negotiating power with the President for other progressive policies and stifle the talking heads and Republican operatives who relentlessly assert that Democrats have no ideas, just criticisms of Republican policies. It would also help the U.S. fiscal situation by reducing the costs associated with the Medicare prescription drug program.

The New Democratic Majority

I have had another (anonymous) blog before (for 1-1/2 years!), but I thought since it became somewhat non-anonymous thanks to The Google, I'd start a new blog. My efforts were spurred somewhat by the (surprising, to me at least) Democratic takeover of the House & Senate. I thought the Dems would pick up maybe 10 seats in the House and 2 in the Senate and I was proved wrong (fortunately). Many of my friends have considered me the most conservative of the group of (admittedly liberal) friends, mostly because of my economics views, but I am a big liberal when it comes to how we treat the poor, mostly because of my Unitarian Universalist beliefs. The new blog will be less technocratic (hopefully, because I'm a dork and a wonk and I love policy discussions, but I want to shy away from that because my job encourages these impulses).

The new Democratic majority has some good intentions but the following should be considered:

• End the war...enough said, our brothers & sisters do not need to die to end a civil war; send in the Blue Helmets (with our support, but under a foreign commander)
  
• Free trade (not preferential trade; I don't subscribe to the right-winger takeover of the term) does benefit people as long as there are social programs to help the transition
• In the same line, China is not to be feared, but accepted and recognized
• Our commitments (as Americans) to the international conventions should be paramount (especially Kyoto & the Geneva conventions)
• Universal health insurance is a necessity to protect our workers and protect our competitive advantage.
• Minimum wages do make a difference in ordinary workers' lives (not just 'high-schoolers'). It makes a living wage possible with little if no impact on unemployment.
  
• Whatever your views, preservation and sustainability of the natural environment is valuable in a social and economic way.
  
• RELIGION HAS TO BE KEPT SEPARATE FROM POLITICS. I consider myself devoted to my faith (Unitarian Universalist), and to preserve the integrity of all religion, it cannot be drawn into politics (although it should be a lobby on governmental affairs)
• Politics need demonetization; money and corporate influence play too much of a role in politics and hurt the democratic process. Corporations should, if they value their Railroad-era protections, subject themselves to individual campaign limits. If they are persons under U.S. law, they should not donate amounts exceeding those allowed by me or Joe Worker.
  
• Education needs to be held as sacred; funded & enhanced and devoid of religious indoctrination.
• While this re-emphasizes an earlier point about the Geneva Conventions, the U.S. should actually condemn torture and desist from using the controversial interrogation tactics. I have met individuals unfairly targeted (and jailed) by the U.S. in the so-called "Global War on Terror" whose only crime was being Muslim. I have also met people tortured under U.S. policy in Latin America (the person I met was subjected to what is now euphemized as 'waterboarding').
  

These are just my suggestions, but the voters tend to agree (given the recent election results). Before the Clinton impeachment hearings, I would have said, "impeach the [m.f.]". Now, I say we should not only because the Republicans have made impeachment a political decisions, rather than a legal decision. Make Bush comply to the will of the people (e.g. increase the minimum wage and tie it to increases in Congressional pay, percentage-wise). But more importantly, don't forget that money makes whores of us all if there is enough of it. The individual conscience is the light of humanity and it, and it alone, should lead decision-making.