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I'm not saying the problems can't be solved or we shouldn't try.

What I'm trying to point out is that the solutions that have been tried for decades have not worked, and making penalties harsher will not work.

Regarding illegal immigration, some people will take the risk no matter the potential consequences, because they have nothing to lose. A year or two in a U.S. prison may be better then life in some shanty town or rural village in Guatemala or Honduras.

Also, as I already said, forgers of documents will do a better job.They already can.

I can't find it now, but I posted a story years ago about some Texas DPS employees who were selling forged driver licenses that appeared completely valid with the magnetic strip and were verifiable in the DPS system.

We already have laws against hiring illegal aliens, but the people who get caught doing it either are not prosecuted or lawyer up and escape severe penalties.

We need someone with the imagination to devise a solution and the force of will to get it passed into law in the face of resistance from powerful interest groups. I don't know who it could be.

- Jim

Tell me something that will work. Everything that has been tried for the past century has failed. Nearly every political neophyte that is elected as a "fresh new face" has been a disaster.

No one will admit voting for him now, but Jimmy Carter carried Texas in 1976. He was the last Democratic presidential candidate to do so.

- Jim

If I knew the answer I would be running for K.B.'s senate seat.

I'm not trying to be a jerk. I've seen the same problems as long as I have been able to understand them—more than 40 years. One politician after another had tough programs, and all of them failed. Probably none of them made more than a momentary improvement.

Case in point: When I was an older teenager in the 1970s, there were just a few daring kids my age who used hard drugs like heroin. The decent kids stayed away from them. I didn't even know what cocaine was then.

Now kids age 10 and 12 are using hard drugs. Everyone who wants illegal drugs knows where to get them.

Something like a trillion dollars has been spent on the "war on drugs" since Nixon declared it. We have all kinds of indignities, mandatory urine testing, warrantless searches, no-knock home intrusions, chipping away at the fourth amendment with the approval of the Supreme Court, long mandatory minimum sentences—and zero progress.

All attempts to stop illegal immigration will go the same route. The smugglers will become more resourceful, and the forgers of immigration documents will do a better job. (They do pretty well now.)

Demand-driven problems can't be solved on the supply side. No individual person can solve them, even if we appointed him dictator (which is my perpetual answer to your first question).

- Jim

People will take whatever opportunity they can get to sneak into the country, smuggle drugs, or otherwise commit crimes.

What I'm trying to say is that if the U.S. could completely eliminate all illegal border crossing from Mexico, the flow would go elsewhere. It always does. Island nations like Australia and New Zealand have illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Nobody is walking there or paddling a kayak.

This problem has been going on through the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations, with Republican and Democratic control of the house and senate. It has defied every attempt to stop it.

The reason is that Americans want to employ cheap labor and don't care about legality. I know people in real life who say they can't hire a native-born American to work on roofs or do drywall. ICE has busted plants that employed hundreds of illegals for jobs like butchering chickens.

It's not just Mexicans, either. There barely is a convenience store or motel owned by native-born Americans. Most of them are operated by Asians. Why do I have a feeling all their paperwork might not pass muster?

Illegal immigration and drugs, along with gambling, prostitution, and obscene pornography, are demand-driven problems. They have been with us through all of recorded history. Even in countries where they execute offenders, they can always find more offenders.

- Jim

... send enough troops to the border to stop the flow of drugs across the border.

Please bear with me for two minutes.

Most drug smuggling and illegal immigration do not involve people crossing the border on foot. We could build a replica of the Great Wall of China on the Mexican border, and little would change.

If you look at drug seizures, many of them are inside goods like laundry equipment manufactured in Mexico that are shipped by truck and signed off by customs. They find drugs in the wheel wells of planes coming from South America. A parcel of something like 50 pounds of cocaine washed up in Galveston recently, probably tossed overboard from a boat persused by the Coast Guard.

Most illegal immigration is people who enter on tourist or student visas and then overstay and violate the terms of their visa.

As I said already, neither situation is going to change while Americans want to buy illegal drugs and hire illegal aliens at low wages.

- Jim

The president can't write laws or amend the constitution (which some of the candidates talk like they think they could). They can sign or veto bills, and presidential vetoes rarely are overridden.

I think a couple of relevant questions to ask are what existing executive orders they would revoke, and whom they would appoint to key positions like attorney general and the supreme court. Homeland security and BATFE also are relevant to RKBA issues.

Gary Johnson is a former governor of New Mexico. I could not have said that off the top of my head. I had to look it up.

- Jim

You don't need to write in Ron Paul. He will be on the Republican primary ballot as a presidential candidate. However, he also has been a congressman for 30-some years.

- Jim

VoiceofReason wrote:I suppose I am the eternal optimist though because I believe this country will eventually do what is necessary. You do not see demonstrations in the streets because the majority of people that recognize the need for those changes I mentioned are not the type of people that take to the streets with a sign unless the situation becomes intolerable.

I also believe that the United States eventually will come up with better solutions. To quote Churchill, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else."

I take a long view of history. The U.S. has made remarkable progress in terms of wider participation in the political process at all levels, elimination of corruption, and transparency in government.

If you look back at the early days of the Republic, only a small minority could vote, millions were slaves, husbands could literally treat their wives like dogs short of outright murder, people went to jail for political speech and writing, it was completely legal to secretly pay a politician any amount of money as long as it was not an outright bribe, senate seats were for sale, and overall a small group of people made all the decisions with little accountability.

BTW, the national debt in 1790 was a far larger portion of GDP and total assets. Probably it was greater than ever since (though economic reporting was nowhere near as detailed as it is now).

As for demonstrating in the streets, that is mainly for young people who have the time and energy.

Older people can donate money and volunteer effort to candidates that they favor. That does not happen much. Recently Tea Party candidates have received that kind of support. Ron Paul did in 2008, but it remains to be seen whether he will again. Ross Perot did in 1992, and we know how that worked out.

- Jim

Here's another way of looking at it:

The majority of Americans who are eligible to vote don't vote, or maybe they come out in presidential election years and vote only for president and a few other candidates with high name recognition. They may stay home and gripe, call talk shows, or whatever; but the situation does not affect them enough to make any effort to change it.

The citizens who do vote and otherwise engage in the political process generally send mixed signals to Congress and to state* and local government. If you look at national elections since 2000, Gore won the popular vote (though of course he did not win the electoral vote—it was a squeaker), W got a solid majority in 2004, and Obama got a solid majority in 2008. The House changed party control twice in that period, and the Senate once.

Pretty much the same people voted. Granted some die, some new voters come of age, some stay home or come out for a particular election for their own reasons.

The only clear message that comes out of these oscillations is that the voters are dissatisfied. I think they are mainly unhappy with unemployment and the lame economy. Again, when you look back at history from the 1930s to the present, that is pretty much what triggered all changes in party control.

Everyone wants to cut the deficit until their own personal sacred cow is threatened. For example farm subsidies will never end while Iowa has such a huge influence on candidate selection.

One man or woman serving as president, however principled, is not going to change this situation (at least IMHO).

*This is not the case in Texas. The Republicans have held all state-wide offices and the legislature since about 1999.

- Jim

I'll give you counterpoints to three of your four goals. I don't mean to be argumentative. I'm just trying to show why the solutions are not easily arrived at.

• Illegal immigrants seem to have a lower unemployment rate than citizens. Factories, farms, construction firms, and restaurants hire them. Individuals hire them as housekeepers and babysitters. None of these employers want to end illegal immigration and pay citizens what it would take for a decent living.
• The only reason that drugs are imported is that Americans buy drugs. It's not just junkies and bad-boy celebrities. Illegal drug use occurs at every level of society.
• I don't see millions of people in the streets demanding an end to deficit spending. There were millions of people in the streets demanding an end to the Vietnam War. They weren't a majority, and probably didn't even represent the consensus of the majority, but they made enough noise to get their way. The same thing happened with racial civil rights a few years earlier.

Nobody openly admits to wanting illegal immigration, illegal drugs, or deficit spending, but they have been going on pretty much forever. Not even 200 Republicans in Congress can agree what to do about them.

P.S.: If I knew the answers to these problems, it would be because I heard them from someone smarter. In that case, they would already have been done.

To quote one of my favorite cynics, H. L. Mencken, "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

- Jim

I think the people can change the direction of government, but a large enough segment of the demographic in certain states needs to want the same goals. Probably the most recent time that happened was the so-called Reagan Revolution, which was a reaction to the economic stagnation and seeming impotence of the U.S. in the 1970s.

As it is now, Congress oscillates back and forth between Democratic and Republican control, and a few senior officials go in and out of power. California, Illinois, and New York balance Texas, Florida, and the rest of the southern states in electoral and congressional power.

I understand that you would like to see an end to that, but what is the common goal of the American people?

- Jim

I don't want to get too far off the original topic, but Iran is not necessarily what it seems. The unelected rulers will let a nutcase like Ahmadinejad run his mouth for their purposes, but they will not let him do whatever he wants—specifically they will not let the fanatics launch the country on a suicide mission. I think they learned from the disasters of the 1980s and 90s.

That said, I don't want to see Iran or any other government acquire nuclear weapons. Too many have them already.

I used to support Dr. Paul, but I won't defend his positions now.

- Jim

VoiceofReason wrote:... How else can the people peacefully let the politicians know we are fed up with “politics as usual”?
We need them to stop with the political posturing and party line horse hockey to do what is necessary to fix the serious problems in this country ...

It would help if they did not each have their own deep-pockets donors and amen corners cheering them on.

Those are voluntary activities by free citizens. There's nothing any of us can do about that except try to be more persuasive.

I think the last serious challenge to the system was Perot in 1992. He got more votes than any third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. He also brought people out to vote who either had never voted before or had given up.

Unfortunately, he had "issues" that became more apparent in 1996.

Before anyone repeats the cliché that Perot "gave" the election to Clinton, please consider this: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11230&hilit=perot&start=30" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(It's amusing now how many people considered one Ms. Clinton the obvious Democratic candidate in 2007.)

Ron Paul has highlighted the widespread unhappiness with the existing system, especially among younger voters, but he offends too much of the establishment ever to be elected President or to gain a leadership position in Congress.

- Jim

It often happens that a swing vote on the Supreme Court makes a huge difference in history. That said, whatever one Congress does can be undone by the next, until the program becomes established and popular—if it does.

TAM: I consider General Petraeus thoroughly admirable. I don't know whether he would be willing to run and serve as President or how he would govern.

I sometimes think anyone willing to run for office should automatically be excluded as a candidate, but I can't think of what else to do. When the ancient Roman electorate lived in one town and all knew each other, they nominated people who did not campaign for office. That's what VoiceofReason is asking for, but I think that is impractical in a country the size and complexity of the U.S.

I'll also point out that most contested elections have margins in the 54-44% range or closer (with some votes going to third-party candidates). That means nearly half the electorate does not favor the winner. Only a few presidential elections have had margins as wide as 60-40. One was Nixon in 1972 (60.7-37.5%, to be exact).

- Jim

G26ster wrote:I agree with your premise, but if the ramming through of the health care bill wasn't "tyranny of the majority," then what was it?

It's not an accomplished fact yet. Parts of the health care bill were held unconstitutional yesterday by the 11th Circuit Court. Probably it will go the Supreme Court.

- Jim