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Time to Annex Mexico!
Since we obviously cannot safeguard our border with Mexico, why not just annex Mexico? Let’s declare Mexico a protectorate of the United States and set about governing it in a benevolent, but self-interested way. In time, we could incorporate it as several new States.
The current flow of Mexicans and Central Americans to the United States constitutes the largest diaspora in modern history. An estimated 10% of Mexico’s population of more than 107 million people is now living in the United States. About 15% of Mexico’s labor force is working in the United States and one in every seven Mexican workers migrates to the United States.
The immediate benefits of this are obvious. Mexico’s oil industry is its largest provider of revenue, but is very poorly managed. Its vast revenues are not benefiting the Mexican people who clearly feel compelled to emigrate to the United States. The Mexican government relies on oil income because its national tax evasion rate is more than 40%.
Given America’s growing need for oil, annexing Mexico and denationalizing its oil industry would permit the investment necessary to upgrade it while providing less reliance on foreign sources in the turbulent Middle East or Venezuela.
The second largest source of income for Mexico is the remittances Mexicans illegally in the United States send home. It is currently estimated at between $23 and $25 billion. That is equal to the foreign aid the United States annually provides to the entire world. It is nearly equal to what Mexico’s oil industry generates every year.
It is U.S. money that is literally going south while native-born and naturalized Americans are required to fund our education and health systems that provide free care for illegal Mexicans and their families, a vast number of whom qualify for welfare as well. The U.S. is literally importing poverty. Economist Robert J. Samuelson has noted that, "the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. Since 1980, the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government’s poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent."
Meanwhile, a June 2004 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that is awaiting President Bush’s signature would literally bankrupt the Social Security system if approved by Congress. The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexicans to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.
A study by the United Nations Population Fund concluded that remittances to Mexico are not helping to develop that nation’s economy. Instead, the money is spent on groceries and other daily expenses. A study by the Banco de Mexico, its central bank, came to the same conclusion, noting that reliance on remittances was itself a cause of poverty since it provides fewer incentives to seek other sources of income.
By annexing Mexico and encouraging American business and industry to expand there, creating new jobs, improving that nation’s prosperity, Mexicans would have less need to relocate in America.
Then there’s the issue of crime. Mexico is a major corridor for the drug cartels that feed the addictions of American citizens. The cartels are violent and have corrupted the governance of Mexico at all levels. By taking over Mexico, we can begin to battle this pernicious enemy that already threatens the peace of many southwestern cities and communities.
There is the language problem and, frankly, English will have to become a mandatory second language for Mexicans if they insist on coming to America to work or live here. Many Americans throughout the southwest have had to learn Spanish just to converse with their neighbors and to conduct business. For generations, Puerto Ricans have routinely learned and used both languages.
Will we allow Mexicans to vote in American elections? Yes, but only when they become Americans! Initially we would need a long period of assimilation and acceptance of American values in the same fashion that we currently mandate for naturalization. Current Mexican laws would be replaced by American legislation and jurisdiction to facilitate trade, guarantee the rights of their citizens, and facilitate a crackdown on the criminals in their midst.
There is more than a bit of arrogance for thousands of Mexicans, illegal aliens, to march in the streets of American cities demanding that we grant them privileges equal to Americans without the responsibilities of citizenship, i.e., paying taxes and obeying our laws.
The greatest benefit would be that America would avoid becoming a de facto Third World nation.
Mexico would not cease to exist. It would become a functioning element of an expanded United States of America. Mexican-Americans would enjoy the full benefits of citizenship while retaining their unique history and culture. In the past, America has achieved this with millions of former Irish, Italian, Russian, German, and other nationalities.
Mexico as a separate nation on our southern border continues to threaten our sovereignty by virtue of encouraging millions of its citizens to ignore our laws, enter our nation illegally, and benefit from our economy.
Mexico as a protectorate and, eventually, a part of America, is a realistic, rational solution. Mexicans are here already. Let’s make them Americans who will live in the former nation of Mexico.
Impossible, you say? Probably yes, and, in truth, I am content to let Mexico be Mexico, but if you have begun to see how impossible it is for the United States to continue absorbing millions of illegal immigrants, then you will understand why the defeat of the immigration "reform" legislation is a victory for the sovereignty and security of the United States.
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Paying More for Milk than Gas
Anyone who has been to the supermarket lately knows that the cost of food is increasing. Energy costs have risen 2.9 percent over the past year, but food costs have increased 3.7 percent.
Americans face the prospect of paying more for a gallon of milk than a gallon of gasoline.
Diverting corn to make ethanol that by law must be blended with gasoline is just about the most stupid thing this nation could require, but that is exactly what it has done. The result is the average price of a bushel of corn is now around $3.60, up from $2.50 last year.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, retail milk prices have increased about 3 percent or about ten cents a gallon this year, but dairy specialists predict it will increase 40 cents a gallon in the months ahead, driving the average cost nationwide to an average of $3.78.
The Kansas Corn Growers Association would like to inform you of some basic facts about corn.
Currently, some 60 percent of the U.S. corn crop is fed to U.S. livestock. As the cost rises, so does the cost of meat, poultry, and the more than 3,500 products Americans use every day contain corn or corn by-products.
Every American consumes the equivalent of three pounds of corn every day.
Having enraged Americans by trying to push through a horrid piece of legislation to "reform" immigration, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is now trying to do the same with S. 1419, the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007.
It is essential to keep in mind that all the panic over energy in America can be traced back to all the many environmental organizations that have devoted decades to insuring that it was too costly to build a single new oil refinery since the late 1970s, to build nuclear facilities to generate electricity, to build more coal-driven facilities to do the same, or to drill for known reserves of oil in Alaska and most of the off-shore areas of the nation.
We have an energy problem all right and you can thank the millions of words devoted to lying about global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and the horrors of people driving the car or truck of their choice anywhere.
Sen. Reid’s bill would increase the current renewable fuel mandate of 7.5 billion gallons to 36 billion gallons by the year 2022. It would leave in place the 51 cents per gallon federal subsidy to the ethanol producers. In return, you will continue to get less mileage per gallon based on a blend where the production and transportation of ethanol drive up the cost.
Guaranteeing ethanol producers a permanent market share is a scheme worthy of the former Soviet Union’s central planners. The proposed legislation is even worse than that. Corn ethanol could satisfy only about 15 billion gallons of the mandate. The remaining 21 billion gallons would have to come from other forms of biofuel that, by the way, are not currently commercially viable today, despite the subsidy!
Let us return to your local supermarket while you buy the week’s groceries. Since corn is a feedstock for meat, poultry, and dairy products, and is used as corn sweeteners and syrups in countless processed foods, just about everything you will cost even more than it does today.
Lucky you. Thanks to an idiotic government mandate for ethanol, you are paying more at both the pump and the supermarket.
Sen. Reid’s proposed legislation includes a tighter Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard for automobiles and trucks. It would require that the average passenger car would have to get 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and then become 4 percent more fuel- efficient each year from 2021 to 2030.
You do not have to be an automotive engineer to figure out that there are finite limits to how much energy that can be gained from a gallon of gas. When you require that it be blended with even less efficient ethanol, the proposed mandate is an impossible goal unless you want to start making automobiles out of cardboard to reduce their weight.
Sen. Reid’s bill has lots of other awful things, but suffice it to say that the public is going to have to leap upon the backs of their Senators once again to insure that this monstrosity never sees the light of day.
One last thought, while you are paying more for food and gas, lots of other people around the world will be eating less. As the cost of corn and other bio-fuel sources increases, the cost of food worldwide will generate food riots. We not only have six billion people on Earth, but every six years, we add the equivalent of the entire population of North America.
Only the hard-core environmentalists will be happy. They don’t much like humanity in general and have pursued policies to deter all manner of development everywhere on Earth. Like what you ask? Like seeking to ban the use of pesticides and herbicides that insure that crops are protected against the many insects and rodents that attack them, along with the many weed species that compete for space.
Renewable fuels? Energy efficiency? It’s worse than a bad joke. It’s criminal.
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2007 Alan Caruba.
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