College Students Pay for More Border Control Agents?

Well, the House has just passed a bill to double the number of Border Patrols from about 20,000 to 40,000.    Is it what the Border Patrol asked for?  Of course not, who cares what they want.  It is simply a bill to make the Republicans look tough on Border Control so they can vote for the immigration bill.  That's all.  Does anyone think it will stop the flow of drugs into our country?  Does anyone think terrorists are going to stop coming in through the southern border ... oh yea, never mind, they fly in on an airplane from Europe mostly.  Does anyone think it will stop the flow of drugs from Mexico, see Our Drug War is the Definition of Smart.

By the way, much of the pot on the street now comes from California ... medical marijuana is considered the good stuff with good quality control.  That is reducing the pot from Mexico more than the border patrol.  

Where do the billions come from to pay for hords of Border Patrols.  Simple, the Republicans are letting the interest rate on the trillions of dollars of student loans double on July 1.  As I understand it, they are asking the Democrats to come up with savings in other areas to off-set the lost revenue from the students.  So, are students, yea the ones with too few jobs in this economy, going to pick up the tab for Border Control Agents?   That should endear the Republicans to the youth of this nation.  And, what about savings to off-set the billions of dollars proposed for more Border Control Agents?  Of course, it would be too easy to just decriminilize Pot; that would be stupid, think of all the drugs lords that would be jobless.  

 H.R.3116 (Department of Homeland Security authorization Act for FY2012) - would authorize programs and appropriations relating to border security. Among numerous provisions, this legislation: requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to present a 5 year comprehensive plan for “operational control” of the border; authorize no fewer than 21,300 border patrol agents, including 2,200 agents assigned to the northern border; establish the Border Enforcement Security Task Force (BEST) to collaborate and share information between federal, state, local, tribal, and foreign law enforcement; conduct a GAO review of border patrol training; allow Customs and Border Protection to patrol federal protected lands including the use of motorized vehicles and tactical infrastructure; commission science and technology experts to pursue new border security enhancements; deploy canine units at the 5 busiest northern border ports of entry; initiate a six month pilot program for unmanned vehicles on the border; and require in person interviews for those applying for student visas from questionable nations. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is the bill’s main sponsor. 
Cosponsors

Meet America's Future: Detroit

Jonathan Dalar: The Dystopian Reality Around Us

Detroit defaults on up to 18.5 billion in debt to avoid bankruptcy, at least for now.  

Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr, appointed by the State of Michigan, is putting a plan together to avoid bankruptcy.  But, city pensioners and the debt holders will all have to take pennies on the dollar to keep the city out of bankruptcy. Too many people have to agree, bankruptcy is almost certain.

Detroit will be the largest city ever to go into bankruptcy.   

In 1909 it required 303 man-hours to make one car; in 1929 the time had been reduced to 92 man-hours, today it is 32 hours. The maximum production was reached in 1925-6 with 8,000,000 cars, now Detroit produces less than half that number. Use Google Image search to look up slums in Detroit.  The slums in Detroit remind me very much of the slums in Lima, Peru where I lived once upon a time.

So, what is the connection between how many people it takes to build a cars and bankruptcy in Detroit.  Try taxing the unemployed, the hopeless, the disenfranchised.  Then try to pick up trash, provide police and fireman, etc. using those taxes.  Then ignore the reality and borrow money trying to keep the city going, hoping for a miracle.  

Of course, salvation doesn't come, because the core problem is being ignored.  We no longer need many blue collar workers and of course, we need less white collar workers to manage the machines than we did the workers.  In the blog "If They Don't Work Neither Shall they Eat" , we look at how the entire system breaks down when we lose workers, who were also consumers, but are no more. 

Yes, there are still parts of the city, where the "Haves" live, versus the have-nots, that are beautiful including
the huge Cultural Center, freewheeling Royal Oak, posh Birmingham, the Ford-town of Dearborn, nearby Windsor, Ontario, and the college town of Ann Arbor, a short drive west.  Christmas, see below, is still celebrated in parts of Detroit.

Rochest in Metro Detroit ...

And parts of Detroit still believes in God, which is a mystery to me, see below.

Heidelberg Project Detroit, Michigan |

If They Don't Work Neither Shall They Eat

MICHELE BACHMANN: ‘IF ANYONE WILL NOT WORK, NEITHER SHOULD HE EAT’ | GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann promised to significantly lower funding to social safety net programs during a speech at the Family Research Council this morning, going so far as to suggest that people who can’t work should not eat. “Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can and should do for themselves,” she said. “Self reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

Hers is a misquote in spirit to the Biblical quote found in 2 Thessalonians 3:10:  "For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either."

What if someone is willing to work but there are not enough jobs to go around.   This is not the future, it is now and it is going to get worse, much worse and much faster than you can imagine.  Moore's law will insure the rate of change in our society will remain mind boggling. 

We are at a fork in the road in this country.  This fork is more significant than any fork we have faced in my life time.  Since World War II,  we have not had a decision to make that could lead us to continued prosperity and an abundant life, or to a prison state with the have and the have-nots. It all hinges on whether or not we can change our cultural biases and absorb the fact that we need less and less workers with every day that passes -- and it is going to snowball, very very fast.

Some have called it the New Machine Age, some have called it the End of Work, some claim there is no solution for the upcoming mass unemployment..  Machines, computers, robots, networks, simulators, automatic controls, neural networks, automated answering services, Watson the Computer, automated warehouses, software than learns, cell phones connected to the cloud, the cloud, etc. are all taking jobs that used to be done by humans.   We can produce all the good and services required to feed and cloth our country, and even the world, with less and less workers every year.  Yes, we have the capacity to feed and cloth the entire world with our technology.  Technology is not what stands in the way, it is US.  

We do not have a problem with production side of the equation.  We can produce as much of anything that we want to produce.  But, we need less and less workers, so we have less and less consumers.  And with less consumers, we turn down the output of the factors another notch and we need less workers ... less consumers, etc.  (The smart ones should have gotten it by now.)

There are two possible futures:  in one, the machines (and computers) feed and cloth the world, in the other, the machines are used to make the rich richer and the rest of the world scrambles for the crumbs.  Surprisingly, the rich are even richer in the first scenario, the egalitarian state, than the second, the prison state, because of economies of scale, i.e., the rich have a middle class to sell the goods and services created by the machines.  But, in the second, much of the resources of society is engaged in a police state, a prison state, where the poor and desperate fight for the crumbs like many in third world countries.  It can't happen? It is already happening:  capitalism is no longer lifting everyone, it is only lifting a small and shrinking elite to the top.  We are one or two generations, a dozen iterations of Moore's law, before a worker will have little to no value.  See American's Future : Detroit.

If we follow people like MICHELE BACHMANN and reduce the social safety net -- as we are already doing -- then our ultimate path to a have and have-not society is insured, and it is only a few more steps to a third world country.  All the guns in the world will not change that when we no longer have money for food, clothes or bullets.  Bachmann assumes that man is inherently bad, lazy, good for nothing.  If that is true, then we are doomed anyway, but if you believe man has an indomitable spirit that strives to achieve, to accomplish, to grow, then keep reading and reach out a hand, believe in people and help keep the social net in place.

The irony is that by installing a safety net that includes food, clothing and basic housing our machine age can flourish and people will be freed to do the types of things this new machine age will require: creating, entertaining, teaching, networking, coaching, encouraging, and most of all, learning and adapting to a new way of life where working is a privilege.  We will need to find purpose in our lives, we will no longer have the sole purpose of surviving that has driven man since they first stood upright on two legs and threw a stick at a tiger ten times their size.  Imagine having a safety net that allows you to pursue your dreams.  We are not talking about having everything with this social net, but at least some food and a roof over your head.

If you need to be reminded how wealth is being created in this world, just look at Apple.  $400 billion of cash in the bank.  American industry alone is sitting on trillions of dollars of cash.  They are not investing because their factories can produce all the IPhones required without less workers each year.  IBM just announced layoffs.  Microsoft just announced it is laying off 16,000 (2014). Apple and Microsoft are companies that helps other companies use technology to reduce their labor force and be more profitable.  As our prisons fill American companies have no where to use their trillions of dollars of cash generated by the new machine age because as the number of workers decrease the number of consumers decrease.  They also run the government via PAC's and the good old boy club, so their wealth is not likely to be taxed away -- nor will that alone solve the problem if that money is not used to create the social net or create some jobs.

Here is another sad thing about this police state we are headed toward ... it will destroy all that we have accomplished in individual rights, including those freedoms we have fought for around sex, race, and religion. This is serious stuff.  I realize I have not made a complete case on how we move from trillions sitting in corporate America to the police state, but perhaps I have given you enough doubt that you will start challenging your own belief system.

We can have the new machine age create a Utopian world, or a hell on earth.  It is our choice.  We either see and adjust to the new reality or we will spiral downward. Right now, America is behind the rest of the world in seeing this looming tidal wave.