We Are Not Free: Election Fraud

Ernest Hancock Interviews Bev Harris, the founder of Black Box Voting 
Hour 1 , Hour 2

Ernest and Bev talk about the way government has stolen the election ballot through electronic voting machines and by not letting people count the ballots.

AZ New & Blogs

• John Stossel on Drugs and the Drug War
• Immigration, Individual Rights, and the New Deal 
• In fact, until the 1930’s, the US was generally (though not perfectly) open to immigration, because we accepted the premise that someone who was born beyond our borders had no less right to find their fortune in this country than someone born in Boston or New York.  I won’t rehash the history of immigration nor its importance to the building of this country, because I don’t want to slip from the philosophical to the pragmatic in my arguments for immigration.
• My Immigration Reform Plan 
• For the first 150 years of this country’s history, our country was basically wide-open to immigration.  Sure, there were those opposed (the riots in NYC in the 19th century come to mind) but the opposition was confined mainly to xenophobes and those whose job skills were so minimal that unskilled immigrants who could not speak English were perceived as a threat.   It was only the redistributionist socialism-lite of the New Deal and later the Great Society that began to make unfettered immigration unpopular with a majority of Americans, who rightly did not wish to see the world’s poor migrate to the US seeking an indolent life of living off of government handouts.
• This is phenomenal.  After years of being stay-at-home moms or whatever, women in America decided it was time to go to work.  This was roughly the equivalent of having 40,000,000 immigrants show up on our shores one day looking for work.  And you know what? The American economy found jobs for all of them, despite oil embargos and stagflation and wars and "outsourcing".
• Kobach’s Defense of SB1070 
• When our governor is saying that the majority of Arizona’s 500,000 illegal immigrants are all drug mules, that none of them are really looking for honest work, and that all they do is cause crime up to and including beheadings in the desert, I get angry to hear the same stupid arguments that many of our grandparents heard about their ethnic groups (though the beheading thing seems to lack historical precedent).  (more on the immigration non-crime wave here).
•  The language of SB1070 has never matched the arguments supporting it.  SB1070 mainly gives the police power to be more intrusive at certain traffic stops and harass day labor centers.  What in the heck does this have anything to do with drug cartels and armed paramilitary gangs on the border?  If, as our governor says, illegal immigrants are not really looking for legitimate work, then why is most of our enforcement via employers offering legitimate work?
• No, the Arizona travel alert isn’t just a stunt 
• The American Civil Liberties Union is raising eyebrows with the travel alert it has issued for Arizona, even before the state’s infamous SB 1070 (PDF) goes into effect.
• The ACLU points out that police, especially in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Venezuela-esque Maricopa County fiefdom, “are already beginning to act on provisions of the law” and their efforts are “meant to create a hostile enough environment for Latinos and other people of color that they voluntarily leave the state.”
• July 7, 2010: "Guest Workers Aid Border Security" featuring Stuart Anderson 
• @7:14: What we saw in the past is that under the Pesero (sp) program, which is an agricultural labor program, we saw that what happened was the Mexican farm workers were able to come in legally to work.  And when there was increase inforcement around 1953 -'54 what we saw happen was at the same time the US government made it easier for people to come in legally under the Pesero program and while 1953 approximately 880,000 people were apprehended at the border which is kind of a proxy for illegal entry by 1959 the numbers had fallen to well under 100,000, which all told represented approximately a 90% decrease in illegal entry.  The Pesero program was later tightened up in terms of its rules and later abandoned altogether by congress by complaints from labor advocates in 1964 and we saw that that was the beginning of the great increases in illegal entry that we see up to the present day.  End @8:39
• Cartels using children to bring drugs to the US 
• Records kept by Customs and Border Protection show 130 minors were caught attempting to bring drugs through entry ports from Sonora into Arizona during fiscal year 2009, an 83 percent increase over the previous year.
• My thoughts:  Prohibition doesn't work.  Where there is a demand you will get the services if people truly want it.  This article is another good argument for legalizing drugs.  Remember the government can't even keep drugs out of jails and away from children.  What makes people think they can keep our borders safe from drug dealers?
• True News Tucson debunks the closing of parts of AZ 
• Boldly risking certain death by decapitation at the hands of ubiquitous Mexican drug smugglers, "Real News Tucson" drives through the section of southern Arizona supposedly ceded to Mexico. Oddly enough, the only trouble they encounter comes at a Border Patrol checkpoint two dozen miles inside the border, where they are definitively told by a BP agent that the notion part of Arizona has been surrendered to Mexican control -- and are therefore inaccessible to Americans -- is "false information."
• Addicted to the Warfare State 
• Retired Mesa police officer Bill Richardson, who worked in counter-narcotics task forces in several Arizona counties, believes that Babeu -- like Arpaio and Arizona state senator Russell Pearce (chief sponsor of SB 1070) -- is "fanning the flames of fear, that the undocumented are the root cause of crime in Arizona. In fact, they are not."
• Feds Challenge Arizona Immigration Law 
• Yesterday, the Obama administration filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s recently enacted law that is designed to curb illegal immigration. The Arizona law has not yet taken effect — that will occur on July 29.  To generate more discussion and debate, Cato will be hosting a policy forum on the legal challenge and related issues on July 21.  If the weather in DC continues to cooperate, it will feel like we are actually in Arizona.
• Big Money Speaks 
• While there was some evidence of statistically significant changes in one of the five goals of Maine’s and Arizona’s public financing programs, we could not directly attribute these changes to the programs, nor did we find significant changes in the remaining four goals after program implementation. Specifically, there were statistically significant decreases in one measure of electoral competition—the winner’s margin of victory—in legislative races in both states. However, GAO could not directly attribute these decreases to the programs due to other factors, such as the popularity of candidates, which affect electoral outcomes. We found no change in two other measures of competition, and there were no observed changes in voter choice—the average number of legislative candidates per district race. In Maine, decreases in average candidate spending in House races were statistically significant, but a state official said this was likely due to reductions in the amounts given to participating candidates in 2008, while average spending in Maine Senate races did not change. In Arizona, average spending has increased in the five elections under the program. There is no indication the programs decreased perceived interest group influence, although some candidates and interest group officials GAO interviewed said campaign tactics changed, such as the timing of campaign spending.
• Additional Medicaid funding stalls in Congress putting AZ in a bind  (Subscriber)
• Hope is fading that Congress will approve hundreds of millions of dollars that Arizona is counting on to operate its Medicaid program, and state lawmakers don’t know whether they’ll have to scrounge for cash, beg for help or drastically downsize the state-run health care system. In late May, the U.S. House of Representatives stripped $24 billion ...
• My thoughts: More reason to stop socialism.  There's no reason that AZ should be beholden so much to the federal government.
• The DailyShow with Jon Stewart:  Arizona's Photo Radar 
• Olivia Munn explores the debate between Arizona's highway safety and the invasion of privacy.
• After Words with Judge Andrew Napolitano 
• The Libertarian commentator debates politics, history and what he considers to be the unconstitutional behavior of both the Bush and Obama administrations, with consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader.
• My thoughts:  This is very good.  I would highly recommend watching it.
• Is Yemen the Next Afghanistan? 
• Just before dawn on Dec. 24, an American cruise missile soared high over the southern coast of the Arabian peninsula, arced down toward the dark mountains above the Rafadh Valley in Yemen's Shabwa province and found its mark, crashing into a small stone house on a hillside where five young men were sleeping. Half a mile away, a 27-year-old Yemeni tribesman named Ali Muhammad Ahmed was awakened by the sound. Stumbling out of bed, he quickly dressed, slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and climbed down a footpath to the valley that shelters his village, two hours from the nearest paved road. He already sensed what had happened. A week earlier, an American airstrike killed dozens of people in a neighboring province as part of an expanded campaign against Al Qaeda militants. (Although the U.S. military has acknowledged playing a role in the airstrikes, it has never publicly confirmed that it fired the missiles.)

Rep. Jeff Flake Advocates National ID

July 2, 2010: "Immigration Fact and Fiction" featuring Rep. Jeff Flake 

@4:04:

Caleb Brown (B):  You talked a little about the necessity to have a biometric identifier for people who are coming into this country to work.


Representative Jeff Flake (F): Yes.


B:  Legally does that not in your view invite that type of federal document for all workers in the United States.


F: I don't think so.  We have in theory a national identifier now in terms of work as it relates to work and that's a social security card.  The problem is it is simply not secure.  So we're not proposing legislation that we introduced does not propose a national ID it simply says that if you want to work then you should have a social security number that is tamper proof and biometric.  And that would certainly help substantially employers who really don't know when they are presented with a document if it is genuine or not.

End @5:03

My thoughts:  Representative Jeff Flake has been one of my favorite US representative.  It's sad to hear him playing the world game on national ID.  The social security card is a form of national ID that has become much more than it was originally was supposed to be for.  Now Flake is proposing to increase it's importance in our daily lives.

This is what happens when you have socialism, an increase in state power and the police state.  We need to get at the root of this problem and stamp out socialism in our country.

It's interesting to note that radio talk show host Ernest Hancock has been crying fowl on this issue for quite some time now.

AZ News & Blogs 7/6/2010

• Arizona Voters Should Decide If Secret Ballots Are Fundamental Right 
• Arizona voters will have the opportunity in November to decide if secret ballots should be a constitutional right during public elections and the creation of labor unions, unless a union succeeds in its bid to have the proposed amendment removed as a ballot measure. 
• In June 2009, the Legislature referred Proposition 108, also known as Save our Secret Ballot, to Arizona voters. The United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery store workers, went to court 11 months later and demanded that Prop.108 be struck down as a violation of the requirement in the Arizona Constitution that voters consider only one subject in each ballot measure.
• State Keeps Spending at Record Levels Despite Huge Budget Shortfall 
• Arizona is still spending at record levels despite a $2.7 billion dollar budget deficit and an 18 percent state sales tax increase to help fix it. Today marks the start of Fiscal Year 2011 and, according to a spending clock sponsored by the Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Arizona is on track to spend $29.3 billion this year.
• Even though Arizona has had a budget deficit for three years, spending is still on the rise. The state spent $888 per second in FY2009 and $920 per second in FY2010. Now Arizona is spending $929 per second in FY 2011. 
• "There goes the notion that government is doing more with less," said Steve Voeller, president of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. "It's doing more because it has more."
• Sheriff Joe, Sheriff Mack and Derek Sheriff: Three Views on Arizona’s New Immigration Law 

• Building Codes and Protectionism 
• I have written a lot about state licensing typically being more about protecting incumbents from competition than consumer protection.  This is a story in a similar vein, where plumbers worked to stop the approval of waterless urinals because they required, well, fewer plumbers to install.  In the end, there was a compromise — the plumbers would support waterless urinals in the code, BUT the code would also say that water still had to be piped to the urinals that don’t need water.  I kid you not.
• to Hyperinflate 
• This potential move gives the deflation versus inflation debate a new perspective. We have written in the past that we had questions about the Great Depression based on conflicting opinions of Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman et. al. Living through the "Great Recession" has begun to clear them up. It is a little like being a lab rat; it is painful, but the experience gives you an insider's look at the scientific method. Or in this case a fiat-money economy.

Jan Brewer a Democrat or Neocon?

• Jan Brewer Continues to Fabricate Position on Taxes 
• As Jan Brewer continues to portray herself as a conservative, her record on tax and budget matters tells a different story. Brewer’s record on fiscal policy is one of higher taxes, more spending, and budget deficits as far as the eye can see.
• In 2009 Brewer increased property taxes in Arizona by $250 million by vetoing the permanent repeal of a state property tax....As a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Brewer repeatedly voted for higher property taxes (Arizona Republic, 2002).
• Brewer’s Idea on Jobs? Another Government Agency 
• Since Jan Brewer took office, Arizona’s unemployment rate has jumped from 7% to nearly 10%. Despite efforts from state lawmakers to cut taxes, Brewer simply raised them $3.25 billion.
• Her latest idea is to create yet another government entity focusing on job creation. To kick-start the new Commerce Authority, she handed them a government check for $10 million.
• Arizona’s Truth-Teller-in-Chief Eyes Tried-And-True Violation of Truth-In-Taxation Law to Balance Her Unbalanced Budget 
• The state’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee official estimates say Arizona is $368 million in deficit already and we’re only a week into the fiscal year. Add to that the $400 million in federal Medicare matching dollars that was counted on that’s not coming. That’s a budget out of whack by nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars and we really haven’t gotten started on this year’s faux-balanced budget fashioned under the flinty Governor Brewer last February.
• Oh yeah, that Brewer budget is also predicated on passage of both Prop. 301 and Prop. 302 this November. The former steals $125 million from the Growing Smarter fund for land preservation and the latter steals $325 million from the First Things First fund for “the children”. Well-funded “no” campaigns are already gearing up to defeat those measures ironically consisting of many of the same interests behind Prop. 100’s grand coalition of multi-millionaire spenders.

Cato Institute & Immigration Papers

Cato Institute has put out papers analyzing immigration (including illegal) to the U.S.

Immigration & Crime:


In general, we know that illegal immigrants do not exhibit violent resistance when
apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol Agents. In more than 10 million apprehensions since
2000 we have not seen much evidence of those entering illegally to work in the U.S. arming themselves to fight Border Patrol Agents. However, individuals linked to organized crime rings are likely to be armed, given their involvement in drug or human smuggling and the money involved.  In the case of immigration, the lack of temporary work visas and the increased difficulty of entering illegally due to increased enforcement have compelled more illegal immigrants to turn to coyotes—middlemen who guide illegal immigrants across the border to
evade the Border Patrol. “According to U.S. and Mexican police, this is partly an unintended

consequence of a border crackdown. Making crossings more difficult drove up their cost,
attracting brutal Mexican crime rings that forced the small operators out of business.”9
Much of the lawlessness and the violation of the rights of property owners could be
eliminated with the introduction of increased legal means of entry for the foreign-born to
work in the U.S. Foreign-born workers do not wish to cross hazardous terrain or risk kidnapping
at the hands of smugglers any more than an American would. The best way to reduce lawlessness along the border is to put in place a work visa law that removes the profits from smugglers and thereby reduces the risks faced by would-be foreign workers and U.S. property owners.



A Look at the Senate Democratic Proposal for Immigration Reform: Is the Glass Half Empty, Half Full or Shattered on the Ground? 


The best way to reduce illegal immigration is to provide more legal avenues to work in the United States.



Overall, the Democratic proposal represents a signal to both supporters and opponents. To supporters who value legalizing the status of those in the country illegally, the proposal would fulfill such desires if it became law. To supporters who wish to establish a commission or other mechanisms to restrict employer-sponsored temporary visas or green cards, then the proposal
fulfills their wishes as well. 


Opponents of the measures would fall into different categories. Anti-immigrant organizations and a large bloc of members of Congress will oppose the legalization of those in the United States illegally, labeling it amnesty no matter what conditions are
established. Employers should be wary of even positive reforms offered in the proposal, since members of a commission eager to show their relevance to immigration policy could override such reforms. Whether the Democratic proposal should be viewed as a glass half empty or half full—or a glass shattered in pieces on the ground—must await the arrival of legislative language.


Do Gaps in E-Verify Justify a National ID? 



U.S. legislators rarely abandon programs that don’t work well, despite the costs or the impact on law-abiding individuals.



When it comes to illegal immigration, policymakers often present conflicting narratives. Elected officials cannot decide whether the problem is that employers are unscrupulous or that they are honest but unable to verify documents. Most of the recent rhetoric emanating from Washington,
D.C., indicates elected officials think most employers are cheats. 


But if employers are dishonest, then the easiest way to beat E-Verify, a National ID card, or any other combination of systems and documents is simply not to use them, hiring workers “under the table.” The costs and burdens then would fall on those who obey the law, not on those who break the law.


Few are asking the more obvious question: Wouldn’t the issue of unauthorized workers be resolved if employers were simply given access to a legal supply of workers who are willing and able to work in the United States? If a robust temporary visa program were operating, almost all employers would hire only legal and available workers. Such a policy is far preferable to requiring 97 percent of the population—legal immigrants, native-born and naturalized citizens—to carry National ID cards to make it more difficult for 3 percent of the population to work in the United States. 

AZ News & Blogs 6/25/2010

Drugs

• All’s “normal” after Rocky Point police chief, bodyguard shot 
• Puerto Penasco, Mexico Police Chief Erick Francisco Landagaray, and his bodyguard Luis Huerta Ibarra, were gunned down over the weekend while patrolling the seaside city, also known as Rocky Point.
• Mexican drug lords creating havoc in southern Arizona 
• Mexican drug cartels have set up shop on American soil, maintaining lookout bases in strategic locations in the hills of southern Arizona from which their scouts can monitor every move made by law enforcement officials, according to federal agents.
• Possession of Any Recreational Drug Has Been Legal in Portugal Since 2001… 
• …and the country hasn’t fallen apart. (I know—you’re “shocked.”)
• See the video. 

Oh, Politics!

• WSJ: “JD Huckster” 
• The Wall Street Journal has weighed in on the reality of JD Hayworth.  Not the spin, not the shiny object, revisionist history campaign fluff…the real story.  This reality is best personified in the portion of the infomercial  starring the “former member of the powerful Weighs and Means Committee” where he uses the trust of the people who elected him to sway the hearts and minds of others into a complete and total scam.
• Why Jim Deakin Should Support JD Hayworth for the US Senate 
• If anything, he brings lack of experience.
• My thoughts:  The one good thing.
• What’s this? NRA rejects own board member Buz Mills, endorses Brewer 
• Arizona gubernatorial candidate Owen “Buz” Mills, a honcho with the National Rifle Association (NRA), got a rear-end full of buckshot as the organization endorsed his adversary, Gov. Jan Brewer.
•  Listen to Ernest Hancock talk on the corrupt NRA with Sheriff Mack.
• Jan Brewer's new motto: "Damn the facts, full distort ahead!" 
• The example he cited involved her saying, during a debate between the R candidates for governor that the majority of undocumented immigrants were engaged in narcotics trafficking and extortion and that they are responsible for a massive crime wave in Arizona.
• As this Think Progress piece from writer Andrea Nill points out, during a period in Arizona's history that has seen an increase in undocumented immigration, there has been an actual decrease in crime in AZ.

Oh, Politicians!  Time to get rid of the welfare state!

• Sells Islands? 
• On the surface it seems shocking that a nation would sell off parts its physical environment because of public sector debts. But this has been going on for a long time in impoverished nations. First profligate nations are lent a lot of money by private sector banks. Then the nation becomes over-extended revenue-wise. Finally the IMF is called in to provide a "loan" that must be paid back. The impoverished nation cuts its bloated public sector, raises taxes and sells of chunks of its public portfolio, maybe to the fraternity of banks that lent it money in the first place.
• My thoughts:  Et tu Arizona?

Living

• Living on (a Lot) Less 
• I spent last weekend at a lake house in Maine with a broken water pump. For three days, we had no running water. Being beside the lake gave us ample access to water, but nothing flowed from the taps.
• It turned out that five of us could live pretty comfortably on about five gallons of water a day.

AZ News & Blogs 6/19/2010

• Arizona Immigration Law = National ID for Arizonans 
• Despite protestations to the contrary from the law’s sponsor and others, this law turns the Arizona drivers license  (actually any state license) into a national id.
• It’s a common misconception to believe that the national id must be a card or a chip.
• National ID not a card or a chip, but is the data that the federal government has on you.  What the federal government has been attempting to do for many years, most notably under the Clinton administration, was to find a way to integrate all of the various data they have on American citizens into an easily searchable, easily sharable database and data exchange format.
• My thoughts:  Ernest Hancock has been talking about this for quite some time.
• But They Are Politicians 
• Jacob Sullum writes about the gnashing of teeth among Arizona politicians that suddenly must rely on voluntary contributions rather than campaign funds taken by force from taxpayers who may not even support them.
• But if they were reasonable people who considered long-term consequences and took responsibility for their own actions, would they even be politicians.  Is it any surprise that a class of human beings who, in response to looming bankruptcy in Medicare, pass a trillion dollars of new health care spending commitments closed their eyes to what would likely happen when this campaign finance law reached the Supreme Court?
• Court premature in stopping matching funds 
• My thoughts:  Well, the coyote blog said it best.
• Primary Election Debate Videos 
• Republican Candidates for Governor 
• Uptick in Violence Forces Closing of Parkland Along Mexico Border to Americans 
• Lawmaker Warns Parks Takeover by Mexican Cartels, Illegals 'Intensifying' 
• My thoughts:  More reason to resolve the core issues: legalize drugs, get rid of NAFTA, etc.
• Ernest Hancock interviews Nick Dranias of Goldwater Institute on Clean Elections 
• My thoughts:  This is really good.  Don't miss listening to it.
• Ernest Hancock talks on local politics (Mesa)