The DREAM Act supporters are lying when they say you “just have to serve two years in the Armed Forces” to receive US citizenship.

Have you ever stood before a judge and been told you have two options to pay your restitution for your criminal offense?  For the purpose of this discussion, let’s assume that option one is community service and option two is to pay a fine.  If you don’t have the money, you can do the community service work and the fine is considered to be paid off.  Therefore the two options are identical because both completely pay off the restitution you owe for your criminal offense.

The DREAM Act says you can get US citizenship if you complete two years of college or serve two years in the Armed Forces.  Whether or not people realize it, the DREAM Act has made the two actions equivalent.  Both options completely pay the restitution required for breaking the law and entering the US illegally.  Spending 2 years in college avoiding alcohol poisoning at fraternity parties is equivalent to dodging IEDs in Iraq for 2 years.

One person risks their life to bring freedom to a foreign country, fight terrorists who want to kill us, and defend all of our freedoms.  And they do this while spending many months away from home, missing out on many important family events, such as birthdays, anniversaries, and the birth of a child.

Another person enjoys life, spends time with their family and gets to better themselves and advance their personal well being. And both get the same reward of US citizenship when they have completed their tasks.

I stand by my first statement:
The DREAM act is the most degrading and despicable insult to the United States Armed Forces, in US history.

When push comes to shove, the historical fact is the government will simple refuse to pay its debt obligations or entitlement promises.  The million dollar per family debt in 2012 will not be paid to whomever is owed the debt.  Don’t be one of them.

In 1983 the government took at least 10% of the Social Security benefits for anyone born after 1959, when it raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 for those people born after 1959.  The Social Security fund was saved for another 20 years.

In 2009, the government took some of the pension and health benefits from Delphi workers when GM went through government controlled bankruptcy.  Another debt crisis solved.

Yes, the coming years will be painful, but the unfunded liabilities of all governments simply do not exist, because the government can simply refuse to pay them and the debt holder has no legal recourse to force the government to honor its promises.  The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that past congresses can not tie the hands of future congresses.  If a future congress and president want to modify an existing promise then it is perfectly legal and constitutional for them to do so.

“Neither a borrower, nor lender be” when it comes to dealing with government.

You go to doctor who operates on you.  He injurers, cripples or kills you.  He has medical malpractice insurance.  You do not.  What is wrong with this picture?  Shouldn’t you have the medical malpractice insurance?

Let’s see what happens when the patients buy medical malpractice insurance instead of their doctor.  Your wife buys medical malpractice insurance to cover injuries caused by her Primary Care Physician (PCP).  It costs $500 per year.  You buy medical malpractice insurance to cover injuries by your PCP and it costs $2000 per year.  What is the insurance company trying to tell you?  Is it “maybe you should find a new PCP?”

Question:  What is your PCP going to do when all their patients move to another doctor?

Answer:  Join a group of doctors so the malpractice insurance is the average of the group and not the individual.

Question:  What are the original doctors in the group practice going to do with the new doctor?

Answer:  Don’t let him perform the procedures that he was getting sued for.  Train him on those procedures and provide over sight until the mistakes are found and removed.

Question:  Who made the doctor get better?  A government bureaucrat, a trial lawyer, or his fellow doctors?

When patients buy malpractice insurance, several things happen:

1) Trial lawyers are removed from the system.

2) The performance of your doctor is known by you.

3) The awards for damages are set before the damage is done.

4) The risk of certain medical procedures is known before the medical procedure takes place.

How to purchase your insurance and the benefits of each option:

About half the money paid out in lawsuits goes into the pockets of a lawyer.  This means the awards to injured patients can remain the same, and the costs can be cut in half, when trial lawyers are removed from the system.

When you buy your insurance, then you can discuss with the insurance company what are the risks in advance of the procedure.  You can select lower risk procedures or you can choose a different doctor to perform the same procedure.

An example of this is my relative who had his PCP perform prostate cancer surgery on him.  My relative died during the operation.  The PCP had last done the operation in medical school.  If my relative had gone to an oncologist who does this operation weekly, he might be alive today.  The insurance company would have known the number of times each doctor had done the operation.  The risks for each doctor performing the operation would have been described in easy to understand insurance premiums so the patient knows which is the greater risk.

When the patient buys the insurance, the damages are set and can be spread out over time.  You can buy insurance that will cover your kids college expenses, your spouse’s retirement, your loss of wages, etc.

This means all the uncertainty of multi-million or billion dollar awards are removed from the system.  You are insuring a known risk versus an unknown risk.

There are several ways for the malpractice insurance to be purchased:

• The patient can purchase the insurance through their health insurance policy or with an outside insurance company.
• The doctor can buy the malpractice insurance for the patient through his malpractice insurance company or an outside company.
• Both the patient and the doctor can buy the insurance annually for a PCP or on a procedure by procedure basis for a specialist.

All the ways to buy insurance are voluntary.  No one loses the right to file a lawsuit.  The doctor does not know which patients bought the insurance and which did not.  He treats them all the same.  The doctor still maintains his liability insurance because he does not know if a patient has no insurance or will sue him.

The malpractice insurance companies, for the patient and the doctor, will work out the refunds and costs when I have waived the right to sue the doctor.  The doctor never knows which patients are getting the refund or even how many patients have declined the right to sue.

Conclusion

Any patient injured by a doctor is immediately paid a reasonable amount that meets his needs for as long as he has needs caused by the injury.  The doctor knows his liability risks prior to treatment and makes medical decisions based on medical science and not on lawsuit mitigation and avoidance.  No money from the medical sector of the U.S. economy is spent on liability lawyers.

1. A train takes three days to go from NYC to LA.  A plane takes eight hours.  Over three days the plane makes three trips from NYC to LA and three trips from LA to NYC.
2. The labor costs for an eight hour plane operation are the same as the labor costs to operate a train for eight hours.
3. The depreciation costs for one hour of train operation is the same as one hour of plane depreciation.

Over a 3 day period, let’s look at the economic models of both transportation systems.

Revenue

The train sells one set of tickets for one revenue stream.  The plane sells six sets of tickets for six revenue streams.  How can the train compete with a plane when a plane makes six times more money over the same time period?

Labor

The train takes three shift of workers, working for three days to move the train from NYC to LA.  The train takes nine worker shifts to generate one revenue stream.  The plane takes one labor shift to generate one revenue stream.  Over the three days, the plane uses six shifts of workers. This means over three days, the train’s labor costs are 50% more than the labor costs for a plane, and the plane generate 6 times more revenue than the train.

Depreciation

The train works for three straight 24 hour days without stopping for a total of 72 hours of depreciation.  The plane works for 16 hours each day over a three day period for a total of 48 hours of depreciation.  The train’s depreciation is 50% greater than the plane’s.

Conclusion

Trains will never be able to compete with planes.  Trains are slower and therefore cannot generate the revenue needed to compete with planes.

Politicians and lobbyists have proposed changing the immigration laws to allow a guest worker program so that companies can bring in foreign workers to fill a shortage of workers in critical areas of the economy.

Guest Worker Requirements:

When guest workers are allowed in the country for a few years to fill a critical need that cannot be filled by an American worker, what requirements should be placed on the company that hires these guest workers?

The replacement American worker must be hired and trained before the guest work leaves, otherwise you are rotating guest workers in and out of the same position and never solving the shortage.  The hiring of Americans to replace a guest worker should be linked to a company being granted a guest worker visa in the first place.  Also, part of any guest worker job description and skills should be the ability to train their replacement.

When a company is desperate to do something they will always pay more to accomplish that work.  The company should be so desperate to fill the job that they advertise the job for 6 months at above the average salary for that industry.  Pay that is 50% to 100% above the prevailing rate should prove they are desperate.  The greater the pay is above the average salary in that industry and the longer amount of time they have advertised should be used to determine which company gets the limited number of guest worker visas.

A company that is receiving government contract work should not be allowed to have a guest worker visa.  For to do so, would mean the government is subsidizing the hiring of foreign workers.

The guest workers’ salary should be large enough so that the guest worker receives no government subsidy for any service while they are in the US.  The guest worker pays out of pocket for all school, housing, health care, and transportation expenses.  Nothing should be subsidized by the government.  All equivalent American workers at that company or in that industry should have a salary that does NOT require the worker to receive government subsidies for any services, also.

The state and the city in which the job is located should have below average unemployment rates in that industry.

The number of guest workers allowed at a company, in an industry or in the United States should go down over time, and NOT remain the same or increase.  They are after all training their American replacements.  Visas should be withheld from companies or an industry that has a rise in the number of guest workers.

Remaining Problems

What are you going to do to prevent a guest worker from becoming an immigrant?

Are you going to prevent them from getting married to an American?

Are you going to prevent them from becoming pregnant or getting some American pregnant?

Conclusion

The guest worker program should be used to solve a short term shortage in a critical, high paying job and to have guest workers train American workers in those high paying skills.  The guest worker is employed in an industry that does not receive government subsidies.  The wages in that industry for equivalent American workers are high so they do not receive any government subsidies.  The number of guest workers in an industry and in the United States goes down over time.

The question for people who believe “war is not the answer” is, “What is your answer when war is the question?”

Answer: No.

If scientists cannot explain the past, how can you trust them to predict the future?

We know the earth naturally goes through periods of warming and cooling.  The question is how much of the warming is caused by man versus how much of the warming is cause by nature?  So if anyone tells you that we are suffering from man made global warming, ask them “What caused the ice ages and the glacial periods to end?”.

Conclusion

Until someone can convincingly explain the natural cycles of global warming and cooling that started and ended the previous ice ages and glacial periods, their claim that global warming is man-made should be suspect.

Government Bureaucrat has better wages, better health benefits, and better pension plans, than either Peter or Paul.

If Peter and Paul would learn to live within their means, all the money being paid to Government Bureaucrat could be divided up between Peter and Paul which would rase the pay and benefits for both of them.

The tax deduction CashInTheHand solves this problem.  The tax deduction divides up the money that government spends on social programs and gives it to the American workers.  To provide the need services, the American worker can hire themselves, they can hire another person, or they can hire the government to do the work.  The choice is theirs on how to spend the money and how much to spend and what to spend it on.