Drug Legalization

The Mexican assembly has passed legislation that legalizes the possession of small quantities of illegal drugs, while stiffening penalties for possession of larger quantities (presumed to be for resale). Political and lamestream media reaction has been largely (and predictably) negative, with most of the commentary focusing on the incentive thus provided for Americans in border areas to go to Mexico to purchase and use drugs.

I can’t get too excited about this change in Mexico’s laws. It’s actually less of a change than most people realize, as for many years the police and judges in Mexico have had the discretion to not press charges on people possessing small quantities of drugs for personal use, and that discretion is frequently used. The new law really just makes that discretion mandatory, and then cracks down fairly hard on trafficking — not a big change from the current status, and in my own personal view, the change is in the wrong direction.

My own views on drug legalization are essentially the usual libertarian view: I don’t believe the government has any business regulating any activity that does not harm others. I’m not a user of illegal drugs myself, so I don’t have a personal dog in this fight. If an adult wants to harm him or her self by abusing a dangerous drug, I think that person should have the right to do so. Think of it as evolution at work.

Furthermore, in the case of drugs that are declared illegal, the government is doing demonstrable harm to its citizens. By criminalizing the use of a drug, the government doesn’t stop people from using it — just as prohibition didn’t stop people from drinking alcohol. Anybody who want the drug badly enough is going to find a way to get it — from a criminal enterprise, by definition. When, as with either alcohol or illegal drugs, the overall demand in the country is large, then huge (and hugely profitable) criminal enterprises spring up to service that demand. This is as inevitable and predictable as the sunrise tomorrow morning. Equally inevitable is the premium price that will be placed on the drug — and this manufacturers criminal behavior from drug users who are desparate to finance their next dose. This surge in criminality was experienced during prohibition, and it’s being experienced in the U.S. today — depending on whose estimate you want to believe, between half and three quarters of all property crimes, and a similar fraction of violent crimes, are related to drug usage or drug trafficking. Our overcrowded prisons are full of people convicted of such crimes.

Several things would most likely happen (I don’t think there’s any way to know for sure unless we tried it) if we decriminalized drug use:

— We’d have to set up the same sorts of rules we have today for minimum drinking age, to minimize the exposure of people to drugs when they’re too young to make rational decisions about such things. Yes, all such regimes are imperfect, and some abuses would occur anyway — just as they do with alcohol. It seems likely to me that society would survive such abuses just fine — and when they occur outside the stigma of criminality that they do today, they’ll be all that much easier to uncover and deal with.

— The prices of drugs will fall dramatically, and the quality and consistency will rise dramatically. That’s because the production will no longer be illegal, and legitimate companies (much like the alcoholic beverage companies) will make a business out of the entire process of production and distribution. And naturally the government will require safe drugs with consistent dosages (much as alcoholic beverages are all clearly marked with the percentage of alcohol). That means drug users will no longer take unknowing risks when they use their drugs; today there are no guarantees about the dosage in illegally acquired drugs.

— I have no clear notion of what will happen to the number of drug users. The knee-jerk reaction is that the number will go dramatically up, but that reaction ignores the ease and low risk with which one can obtain drugs illegally today. My bet would be that we’d see only a small change, as for the most part the people inclined to use drugs are already doing so. The much lower prices might encourage more drug use, although the experience of the Netherlands (which decriminalized most drug use years ago) seems to argue against that difference being very large.

— Overall levels of violent crimes and property crimes should be greatly reduced. This effect is a good enough reason all by itself to justify decriminalizing drugs, in my opinion.

— The corruption and other threats to the rule of law inherent in large-scale illegal drug production and distribution, in this country and in other countries involved, would be great reduced or even eliminated. Like the preceding effect, I think this is reason enough all by itself to justify decriminalizing drugs.

But will decriminalization ever happen? Every poll I’ve seen on the subject shows depressingly little (from my perspective) support in the American public for decriminalization. I have a difficult time understanding this, especially when it comes to comparatively harmless drugs such as marijuana — why on earth does the American public (some 40% of whom are marijuana users!) see a clear moral distinction between alcohol use and marijuana use? It’s easier for me to understand the public view when it comes to addictive drugs — there’s much more on both sides of the balance there.

But for me, my libertarian views far outweigh all the other arguments (including those I’ve discussed above): in my ideal democracy, the government would keep its nose completely out of my personal behavior (so long as that behavior affects only me or others voluntarily choosing to participate in it with me). By criminalizing drugs, the government is telling me that I can’t do something to myself, even when it does no harm to anyone else — and I object to that!

Morning Walk

Lea (our female field spaniel) and I are home alone this weekend — Debbie is off at an agility show in Walnut, along with Mo’i and Miki. This morning I was in a mood to relax a bit, and Lea was showing signs of restlessness — and the sun was out for the first time in several days, with wall-to-wall patented California blue sky, and it was 62 degrees and 50% relative humidity. In other words, a perfect day for a nice walk! So Lea and I (with my camera, of course) headed out of our yard and up the small hill that is just west of our home. We walked for a couple of hours at a very leisurely pace, covering perhaps 2 miles — and stopping frequently to enjoy the springtime flowers, lush greenness, and returning migrant birds in our local chaparral…

Somehow in the photo above right, I managed to catch Lea’s toung in mid-pant, curled up oddly (at least in stop-motion like this). She was hot, though — that dark brown coat of hers absorbs the sunshine very efficiently, and from this point onward in our hike she sought out shade at every opportunity. The big rock in the other picture is an odd boulder near the top of the hill. It’s heavy enough that it seems unlikely to have been placed by human effort, and yet it’s hard to imagine how it got there naturally. One of those things we’ll never know, I suppose…

On the beginning of our walk we followed a dirt road that goes by our home. It’s on private land, and is officially closed (with hefty gates at both ends) — but the owner doesn’t actually object to reasonable use of the property, allowing hiking, horseback riding, and bicycling without complaint. He does try to keep off motorized vehicles, though (except in an emergency, such as a fire). This road was bulldozed a long time ago, perhaps 25 years, and the chaparral has started to invade its edges. The three plants show at right (sagebrush, buckwheat, and ceanothus) are all common chaparral plants. The sagebrush is one that my father and I took to calling “super sage” on our recent trip to Big Sur — it’s leaves, when crushed, have a powerful sage scent. I think it’s foliage makes it one of the more attractive native sagebrushes; it’s one I’d like to see thriving in my yard instead of mustard. The buckwheat is one of about a bazillion species we have in the chaparral, and I can’t even begin to differentiate them. The flowers are inconspicuous, but the dark reddish-brown dried flowerheads and seeds are one of the trademark visuals of the summertime chaparral. The blue ceanothus is one of three (perhaps four) species that are native here, and except for one that has very white bark I haven’t learned to distinguish them.

The ceanothus this year have been simply spectacular, and in some locations still are. There is a northeast-facing hillside between Jamul and Rancho San Diego that has one of the most intense displays of dark blue ceanothus bloom that I’ve ever seen, covering an extent of perhaps 200 acres. In our own hills the bloom has been more intense than in past years I can remember, with most plants having more flowers than usual. There are a couple dozen individual plants in my yard whose habits I know fairly well; all of them are more showy this year than in any year in my memory.

Yuccas — several species — are very common in our area. This year we’re seeing a great many “babies” (presumably because of the heavy rainfalls and subsequent flowering last year), and also an above-average rate of blooming (yuccas don’t bloom every year). In the photos at right you can see at least two species (one of them has distinctive purple-tinged flower edges), and probably three. Most yucca plants occur at apparently random places in the chaparral soil, but for whatever reason yuccas are especially good at finding a home in rock crevices. When their flower stalk first appears, its interesting to visit the plant every few days to see how fast that very bulky-looking stalk (which can be up to 20' or so high) grows. These flower stalks, when dry, fall over and lay on the ground like small logs. If you pick one up, you’ll likely be surprised by two things: they are remarkably lightweight, and they are strong. I’ve measured one of these fallen stalks at 16' long, and at its base it was 5.5” in diameter. I was able to pick up that stalk with one hand circling its base, and I could easily flick it about with my wrist. I didn’t think to actually weigh it, but I’m pretty sure it was only about 6 or 7 pounds. Our dogs didn’t like it when I flicked it around, and especially if I tapped them on the shoulder with it when they weren’t looking!

This morning I noticed that the top of the hill has dozens of yucca “babies” — compact little yuccas as small as 8 or 10 inches in diameter. When full grown, these can be as large as about 30 or 36 inches in diameter, with much wider leaves than the babies have. I don’t know much about the yuccas, especially about their growth rate — I’m curious, though, if this “baby” stage is a springtime thing (i.e., they’ll grow up to adulthood within the year) or if it takes them several years to mature…

Lemonade berry (Rhus integrifolia) is a common chaparral plant; a kind of sumac that is most notable for its absolutely consistently leathery dark green foliage, even through severe drought. They typically grow in a very dense shrub; some in our area are as much as 10' high and 15' in diameter (one in my yard is nearly that big). Most of the year, the lemonade berry isn’t much to look at from close up — but when it is in bud (deep red), in bloom (white), and with berries (pink and white) it can be quite attractive (though very variable from year-to-year). From a distance, however, it’s one of the few consistently attractive greens in the summertime chaparral. A couple of summers ago, at the peak of a multi-year drought here, if you looked at our hillside you’d have seen a sea of brown, gray, and weak greens — except for the lemonade berry, which was still a beautiful dark green color.

Our evergreen (so-called “live") oaks are blooming more heavily this year than any other year I can remember (right hand photo). The distinctive coppery color is visible on the big trees from miles away; if you didn’t know they were in bloom you might think the tree was suffering from some strange disease that had discolored its leaves. Last year, even though we had above-average rainfall, the oak bloom wasn’t particularly intense. This year’s rainfall is slightly below average (though much higher than our drought years), but it’s the second “good” year in a row — perhaps that is a trigger for the oak. Virtually every oak tree that isn’t half dead from drought or disease is in bloom like this right now; this bodes well for a bountiful acorn harvest, and that bodes well for the many wildlife species that depend on those acorns. The left-hand photo is some new growth on an oak tree that is growing from an intermitten marsh at the base of the hill. I thought the red color was quite attractive…

This plant is my enemy. Until recently I was calling it “kudzu” (after the Florida invader that is causing huge amounts of damage back there). This thing grows amazingly fast; it’s a vine that creeps and crawls all over any plant that can get it into the air. It has shaded out and killed two manzanitas in my yard — and I love manzanita, so I hate this thing. At Quail Gardens a few weeks ago, the head gardener there identified this for me as Wild Cucumber (Marah macrocarpus), and it’s a native. Its fruit is a bizarre ovoid, roughly the size of a clenched adult fist, covered with sharp spikes. When the vine dies and the fruit turns from green to brown, those spikes hurt if you run into them. This plant is sometimes called “manroot” because of the enormous (up to 100 pounds) water-storing tuberous root. This root stores enough food and water to make this thing just about indestructible — I’ve pulled off all the shoots from a single plant dozens of times in a single year, and it just keeps on shooting them up until the season is all over. It’s the Eveready plant! And just like everything else this year, the wild cucumbers are growing like crazy. And driving me crazy!

From the flower, I believe this plant is some kind of a wild onion. They occur sporadically throughout our hills, and (unlike most onions) they don’t seem to be associated with wet places at all. Their beautiful deep blue flowers are like tiny jewels when you find them (this one was growing beside a very old, overgrown jeep road that now forms the trail up the hill). On the stem of this flower was the odd little white spider at right — I don’t recall ever seeing one of these before. When I first spotted it, the spider was inside the flower — I wonder if it’s associated specifically with this onion?

This plant — which I’m all but certain is a white ceanothus — is in prime bloom right now on our hillsides. The flowers have a similar form and scent to our blue ceanothus, but the leaves look almost like those of a live oak with dwarfed leaves (hence my slight uncertainty). The intensity of the scent on these white ceanothus is several times that of any of the blue species — and every white ceanothus plant is alive with honeybees (see below). I love to see their blooms against our lovely blue sky. And I love to stick my nose into the blooms and inhale deeply — being careful, of course, not to inhale when there’s a bee anywhere nearby!

For whatever reason, it’s common with these white ceanothus (and not so common with the blue species) to have a dense thicket of a few to several dozen individual plants. Within a half-mile of my home there are 20 or so such thickets. Generally all the plants within a given thicket bloom in synchrony, though other thickets do not — this makes me wonder if perhaps the plants are propagating by suckers, so that all the members of a thicket are actually genetically the same plant.

One of the nicest memories of our walk this morning was at a place where the trail leads straight through such a thicket, with plants on both sides of the trail almost closing in a canopy overhead (perhaps 8 or 9 feet high). In the middle of this thicket the sweet ceanothus scent was overwhelmingly powerful; it almost made me dizzy to inhale great lungfuls of it. The bright light filtered down through the white blooms and dark leaves to make a kind of soft greenish glow on the trail, and it was cool in this shade. The collective sound of thousands of bees was very loud; Lea was constantly turning her head, tilting it, trying to figure out where this strange noise was coming from. We spent a very pleasant few minutes just soaking all this in…

Near the top of the hill there is an expanse of exposed rock that happens to face toward our home, east of the hill. We often make this our objective on the hill, for it’s a pleasant place to sit and contemplate our valley. After any rainfall, our hills have many seeps, and often the water they dribble out will form a sheet over exposed rock like this. Just such a seep — a small one — is presently sending a small sheet of water over the rock. Right at the intersection of the seep (soil that is very slowly emitting water) and the exposed rock, there is a set of plant life that appears only when and where there is lots of water. Since open water is quite a rarity in the chaparral, these are plants that you don’t often see here at all, such as the lush green moss in the right hand photo. Isn’t it amazing how the seeds or spores for these plants manage to end up when and where the water is? Every such seep is abundantly covered with these unique plants, so whatever the seed or spore distribution mechanism is, it clearly works very efficiently!

The left hand two photos are of a very specialized plant. I believe it’s a grass, but I’m not entirely sure about that. I’ve only ever seen it growing in small rock crevices — never in open soil. It’s more abundant on this hilltop than anywhere else I’ve been, though I’ve spotted it growing on my property, on Lawson Peak, and on Sycuan Peak. I’m not sure if it actually favors hilltops, or if it’s just that there are more rock crevices in such places. Close up I think it’s rather pretty stuff, though from any distance at all it is completely non-descript.

One of my favorite local wildflowers is this plant, which I’ve never been able to identify. It’s another rock specialist; I only find it crawling over rocks. The plant’s roots could be anywhere adjacent to a rock surface, but they’re often in a crevice. The plant sends long runners out over the rock’s surface, with hairy leaves and stems giving it a pale green color. The flowers are pea-like, and (as you can see) a brilliant and very saturated, slightly orangey yellow. A lovely color against our local granite.

I’ve found these plants in lots of local spots, wherever rocky surfaces are fully exposed to the sun. It seems to be more common on south-facing hillsides, though this could just be the lesser competition on those hot hillsides. It also seems to prefer rock surfaces that are at least a couple of feet in extent (though the plant doesn’t always grow that large). The lushest growth I’ve ever found of this plant was on Cuyamaca Mountain, on a rocky ridge above and to the south of Airplane Monument. This area was devastated by the Cedar Fire, and is still closed for hikers, so I don’t know how that area or these plants fared.

Look at the bottom right hand photo — notice the hairs on the flower cluster’s base? You can also see them on the leaves, especially the vertical leaf in the back of the view. Without all those hairs, the leaves would be a nice, dark green color. Without a microscope or a closeup photo like this, you’d never know those hairs were there…

These photos show a flower field that I wasn’t expecting at all. The top right hand photo shows a view to the south of the hill that we climbed. If you look closely (or at the larger view), you’ll see a splash of yellow at the three o’clock to four o’clock direction from the center of the picture, a short way off of the center. At a distance I couldn’t see what those flowers were at all, but I wondered if they might be the same species that forms dense mats in the hill just northeast of Lake Cuyamaca. So Lea and I headed off through the brush to find out.

The exposed rock shown in that photo is easy to get too from the trail, with a minimum of bushwhacking. Even before I got there I knew that they were the same flowers as up near Lake Cuyamaca — their scent wafting downwind gave them away. If you pick one of these flowers and sniff it, you really can’t smell a thing — but get a whole bunch of them together and then you’ve got yourself a perfume factory!

I find these flowers very interesting, visually. The random pattern made by thousands of blossoms is itself interesting, and then each individual blooms subtle two-toning is also interesting. Then there are interesting reflected light effects; a yellow glowing light that you can see in the bottom right hand photo (taken looking toward the sun).

These things are only an inch or so high, but if you’re willing to get yourself into an undignified posture you get get your nose right in a bunch of them. Oh, what a delight that is! Their scent isn’t heavy and overpowering, like ceanothus; it is instead a light and delicate scent, and most attractive.

While I was in this undigified position, Lea came over to see what I was so curious about. This nose-to-the-ground sniffing was something she understood! She stuck her nose right in the same bunch of flowers I was sniffing, and inhaled deeply. Eyes closed. Then put her head back up and looked at me as if to say “What the hell is wrong with you? There’s absolutely nothing in there! Not a ground squirrel, a rabbit, or even a mouse!"

Here are a couple of other plants that I don’t know. The right hand photo is of a common native, which I keep thinking is some kind of sage — but its crushed leaves don’t smell like a sage at all. Overall this plant is very odd looking, almost like something Dr. Suess might have drawn — scraggly branches that jut off at wierd angles for no reason at all, and leaves that are typically 10” or more apart. Every spring it has this blossoms, surprisingly hard to see until you’re almost on them. The left hand photo is of the blooms on a tree that is planted along one of our fence lines (there are about 10 of them). I don’t know what they are, and I don’t know if they’re native or not. They stay nicely green in all by the worst droughts, so I have kind thoughts about them…

In the white ceanothus thicket I mentioned earlier, I took these two pictures of a honeybee at work. Note the pollen that it has gathered on its rear legs — that little bee has been very busy! Some bees that I spotted had collected about double the amount of pollen that this one had collected. This little fellow got annoyed at my camera being a couple of inches away from him, and he zoomed around the lens and headed straight for my face — I took the hint and backed off…

I tried following a couple of the bees to see where they were coming from, but I had to give up after they took off on a path that would require me to go through some very dense chaparral. I’m very curious about where our local bees build their hives — in all my walking in the area, I’ve never spotted one. But we’ve got plenty of bees about!

This delightful little wildflower is quite mysterious. I have a nice little patch of them just outside the gate to my home — but that’s the only such patch I’ve ever found. I have come across a few individual plants in other places, at random, but never a patch like the one near my gate. The patch is on a north facing slope, mostly bare dirt (what you see that looks like wood chips is actually litter from a brush cutter), on a little bump alongside a drainage ditch. For all I know, this is a non-native that someone planted here, and all the others that I’ve found are escaped from this patch. But somehow this “looks” like a native to me. I’d love to identify it — if you know what it is, please let me know!

Right near our home, a sturdy steel gate blocks the private road I mentioned earlier. The photo shows the chain securing the gate, with two locks arranged so that opening either lock lets you remove the chain and open the gate. This is a very common arrangement in the backcountry; it’s a very simple way to allow multiple people to have access to something without requiring that they all have the same key. In this case, the red lock is a California Department of Forestry (CDF) lock, there to give CDF access in case of fire. The other lock was placed there by the owner of the property, who has kindly given us a key.

Recently a 35 acre parcel was sold to a fellow I’ll just call Mike, who currently lives in Tijuana (because it’s cheap) but is planning to build a house out here. The only way that Mike can get to his property is through a driveway that he had bulldozed; this driveway starts about a quarter mile up this private road — so Mike has to go through this gate to get to his place. Initially the property owner arranged this by allowing Mike to place his own lock in “series” with the other two, thus allowing him to have access with his own key.

Well, Mike wasn’t too clear on the concept. On his first attempt to re-lock the gate, he managed to get things arranged so that only his lock would open the chain. Oops. Then he managed to leave it unlocked accidentally, and someone stole his lock. Oops. So now the land owner has simply given Mike a key to his lock (just as we have), and poor Mike (still unclear on the concept) has twice managed to mess that up. Mike’s got some learning to do if he’s going to change his city-boy ways…

Nuevo Slavery?

I caught a video clip of Ted Hayes (a very interesting black activist and homeless advocate from Los Angeles) on Fox talking about his support for the Minute Men in their efforts to secure the border. At least part of his support is based on the notion that illegal immigration is bad for the black community, because (as he puts it) employers who hire illegal immigrants are trying to reinstitute slavery.

I don’t quite understand why Ted Hayes believes re-establishing slavery with (primarily) Hispanics is bad for the black community particularly (and I only caught the highly-edited clip, so there may well have been some more context), but never mind that — I’d certainly agree that re-establishing slavery would be an evil thing, if that’s really what’s going on. But is it? If there is any element of compulsion in this, then I’d agree with the analog to slavery. I have no doubt that there are at least some occurrences of such hiring with a compulsion element — we’ve all read the “sweatshop” stories, wherein a group of workers is kept virtually captive through intimidation, withheld documentation, etc. Of course such behavior by the “employer” is despicable, and I think making an analogy to slavery in such cases is completely defensible. However, surely it is true that the vast majority of hiring of illegal immigrants is not of this nature. The jobs famously taken by illegal immigrants are in agriculture, construction, hotels, restaurants, etc. — and in these cases, compulsion is rarely found. Instead there is a “market match” between an employer who is willing to pay $X/hour, and an employee who is willing — perhaps even eager — to work for $X/hour. That’s the free market at work, not compulsion — and a comparison to slavery in that case is completely unfair.

What this antagonism toward immigration is really about is jobs and wages. I deliberately left out the word “illegal” because this antagonism would still be there even if we simply made all the immigrants legal. What Ted Hayes would really like to see is enforced restrictions on illegal immigration (and I don’t mean to be picking on Ted Hayes here — he and I agree on many issues, and he’s on the same side as the majority of Americans on this issue).

California’s magnificently fertile valleys, with their horizon-to-horizon farms, make a great setting for an illuminating example of the illogic of this argument against immigration (ignore, for the moment, whether the immigration is “illegal” or not). Thousands upon thousands of farms are there, needing tens or hundreds of thousands of farm workers. Let’s assume for a moment (though this is likely incorrect) that there are enough Americans and legal immigrants to take those jobs at minimum wage. Let’s further assume (though I believe this is simply not possible) that our borders are somehow made impermeable, and despite the fact that just across the Mexican border are millions of people longing for a job at a fraction of our minimum wage — and that we have thousands of employers who would love to pay those lower wages (more on that in a moment) — despite all that, not a single illegal immigrant makes it into the U.S. What do you suppose would happen then? This is exactly the point where most Americans seem to enter intellectual la-la land — they seem to fervently believe that such a situation is static, sustainable, and good. And this is despite the abundant examples, both in history and in current times, of just how awful such a situation is. Strip away all the emotional elements and here’s what you’re left with: such a situation is nothing more than a protected industry, with artificially supported prices. The first thing that will happen is that foreign suppliers will see an opportunity. For example, a Costa Rican company might see an opportunity to grow (say) cabbages and export them to America. That Costa Rican grower can use local labor, employ the same advanced techniques that American agricultural companies use. He might even have better productivity because of Costa Rica’s longer growing seasons and greater sunlight. Costa Rican cabbages will flood the market, and American cabbage producers will scream “Unfair! We can’t compete!” — and Congress, sure as shootin', will put a “protective tariff” in place. This is exactly what’s happening right now with sugar in the U.S. — and it’s the reason we pay double or more the price for sugar that the rest of the world pays.

Repeat after me: the inevitable result of anti-competitive laws (such as artificially restricting the free flow of labor) is protected industries, higher prices, and a decline of America’s worldwide competitiveness. Skeptical? Take a good, long, hard look at Europe — they are far “advanced” down this path, and they are paying a very dear price for this.

Since I’ve already departed company with most Americans on the topic above, I might as well go whole hog and rail on about a related topic: minimum wages. This concept ranks right up there with the top ten all-time most un-American ideas. I can hear the gasps and shock now — how could I possibly be against guaranteeing that everyone get a “fair” wage for their work?

How would you feel about a legislated “minimum price” for (say) televisions? Let’s say there was such a thing — a minimum price for televisions of $300. If a discount store wanted to sell you one for $250, they would be forbidden to do so. Or if a manufacturer came up with a breakthrough and wanted to sell televisions for $100 — but they couldn’t. Would you be happy about this? I think not. And what do you suppose would happen? Most likely, if the price differential were large enough, you’d see a “black market” develop for smuggled, illegal televisions — exactly as has developed for highly taxed products (wherein the tax is effectively a minimum price) such as cigarettes.

Most Americans instinctively are against minimum prices for products. They recognize that we’re all better off if the market can work freely and efficiently — and most especially, competitively. We all want to be able to buy that $100 television, even though we might actually buy a higher priced, more feature rich television instead.

But even though labor is really just one more “product” in the market, many Americans have a different instinct when it comes to it. For some reason, we’re collectively (but not me!) happy to put a minimum price on labor — for a minimum price is exactly what a minimum wage really is.

What are the effects of a minimum wage? Well, in the fields of California’s valleys you see one effect: a “black market” in labor, with employers willing to take the risk of hiring illegal immigrants at below the minimum price. In doing so, they keep their products competitive with the rest of the world’s producers, and the increase their profits — both are very compelling market forces, and very American (though it’s popular to bash this in the liberal community and in the lapdog lamestream media). Another effect is to withhold jobs from Americans — those same employers who hire illegal immigrants on the black market are not going to hire Americans who demand minimum wage — and even if there are Americans who would work for below minimum wages, the employer is not likely to take the much higher risk of doing so. So, opportunities for Americans are removed.

But to me the most insidious effect of a minimum wage occurs at the entry level, where undoubtedly market matches could be made — were it not for the minimum wage law preventing it. I have myself experienced this, a few years ago when I was running my own small business. I’ll tell my own story, but while I’m doing this, try to imagine how many times it is multiplied across the country. I had a small computer business in Chula Vista, California, operating out of about 800 square feet of commercial space. One day I had a knock on my door (an unusual event!), and a teenage girl asked if she could talk with me for a moment. I invited her inside, and she glanced all around as she walked through my shop. When we sat down, she told me she could see how much my shop needed to be cleaned up, and to be kept clean. She launched into a little speech about how much more attractive customers would find my business if it was kept sparkling clean. And she offered to do it, for $2 per hour, under the table. Anybody who knows Chula Vista will likely immediately leap to the conclusion that the young woman was an illegal Hispanic immigrant — but she was not. She was a (very) white, blonde, third-generation Californian. And she wanted to work, didn’t have any particular skills, but knew that most businesses weren’t going to pay minimum wage for a cleanup person. So here she was, trying to get work, and she was offering to do that work at a price I was willing to pay. A perfect “market match” — but I said “no", and the reason was to stay legal. The minimum wage law lost that young lady a job. How un-American is that?

So repeat after me: the minimum wage law is un-American, anti-competitive, and should be repealed.

Exit Exams

California is one of the states requiring that high school students pass an “exit exam” before getting a high school diploma. Exit exams, in this most recent incarnation, were instituted as a way to address the unpleasant and unpalatable fact that our high schools were graduating large numbers of functionally illiterate and ill-prepared kids. The exit exam by itself does nothing to increase the skill level of graduating students, of course — but it does serve to shine a bright light on those schools that underperform.

Now that we have some actual experience with the exit exam, many people are surprised and dismayed by the very high failure rates. People with children in the primary educational system tend to view these results differently than people who are primarily concerned about the quality of the education provided. Parents tend to be more concerned about their child obtaining a diploma; that milestone is perceived as a kind of certification that is a prerequisite for a career or for further education. It’s the certification that matters most to that audience. Employers (especially) and universities (one would hope) are actually more concerned about the quality of the education, as opposed to the certification. Prior to the requirement of an exit exam, the fact that a student graduated from high school told an employer or university almost nothing about the student’s actual learning achievements — if you could breathe and show up in class once in a while, you’d graduate (and I’m not even sure about these requirements). Now the situation is slightly improved — the student has to at least pass the exit exam. True, the student has four chances, and also true, the exit exam was dumbed down when the initial failure rates were embarassingly high — but still, at least there are some objective criteria being met by each graduating student, where there were none before.

The California Department of Education has a web site that you can use to get some interesting reports about the exit exam results. I selected a summary report for my county (San Diego County), and discovered that 32% of our students failed the math portion, and 31% failed the English language arts part; this is slightly better than the average for the state. In round terms, a third of our students are failing to pass the dumbed-down exit exam. To me (remember — I’m not a parent), this is a loud and clear message: our schools are failing to deliver a quality education! One interesting little factoid: I spot-checked a few San Diego County charter schools, and every one of them had failure rates below 20%, one was below 10%. Elsewhere I’ve read that the failure rates for private schools — which includes such things as Catholic schools in ghettos — is well under 10% on average. And this despite the relatively low funding per student in private schools (yes, there are the exclusive private schools with comparatively enormous budgets — but the overwhelming number of private students are disadvantaged kids attending religious schools). There’s a message in those numbers…and it isn’t the same message we hear from the NEA (or it’s local cell, the CTA).

United 93

This was published in today’s Wall Street Journal. I’m hoping that the nice folks at the WSJ will forgive my reproduction in its entirety; Mr. Beamer’s message is an important one to get out…

From the Wall Street Journal ($):

United 93

By DAVID BEAMER

April 27, 2006; Page A18

The calendar says it’s April 25, 2006. At noon, my wife, Peggy, and I are walking around Battery Park — near the Tribeca area — in New York. It is our first time. The flowers are blooming; kids are fishing; people boarding the ferry to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Kids are laughing and noisy. The sun is shining. The vendors are hawking T-shirts, pretzels and some “designer” wares. And just up the street there is a hole in the skyline and in the ground.

In the park, there is a memorial with walls standing tall. Walls filled with so many names of those who gave their all in the Atlantic in World War II. How fitting that the names are here to honor those who gave their lives to enable this fun, this laughter — on this sunny day. The sights and sounds of freedom continue.

Fast forward — it is 10:30 p.m., April 25. We have just seen a movie premiere at the fifth annual Tribeca Film Festival. A film festival that has done so much to energize and revitalize the city, its people and especially the area that has that hole in the skyline and in the ground. This year the movie that had its worldwide premiere at the festival is titled “United 93.” It is about the day when the hole in the skyline of New York was made — the day when a hole was made in the side of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C. — the day when a hole was made in a quiet mountain meadow in Pennsylvania. The day that our nation was attacked; the day when the war came home — Sept. 11, 2001. The day our son Todd boarded United 93.

Paul Greengrass and Universal set out to tell the story of United Flight 93 on that terrible day in our nation’s history. They set about the task of telling this story with a genuine intent to get it right — the actions of those on board and honor their memory. Their extensive research included reaching out to all the families who had lost loved ones on United Flight 93 as the first casualties of this war. And Paul and his team got it right.

There are those who question the timing of this project and the painful memories it evokes. Clearly, the film portrays the reality of the attack on our homeland and its terrible consequences. Often we attend movies to escape reality and fantasize a bit. In this case and at this time, it is appropriate to get a dose of reality about this war and the real enemy we face. It is not too soon for this story to be told, seen and heard. But it is too soon for us to become complacent. It is too soon for us to think of this war in only national terms. We need to be mindful that this enemy, who made those holes in our landscape and caused the deaths of some 3,000 of our fellow free people, has a vision to personally kill or convert each and every one of us. This film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty — the liberty that has been secured for us by those whose names are on those walls in Battery Park and so many other walls and stones throughout this nation. This enemy seeks to take away the free will that our Creator has endowed in us. Patrick Henry got it right some 231 years ago. Living without liberty is not living at all.

The passengers and crew of United 93 had the blessed opportunity to understand the nature of the attack and to launch a counterattack against the enemy. This was our first successful counterattack in our homeland in this new global war — World War III.

This film further reminds us of the nature of the enemy we face. An enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and force a life devoid of freedom upon all. Their methods are inhumane and their targets are the innocent and unsuspecting. We call this conflict the “War on Terror.” This film is a wake-up call. And although we abhor terrorism as a tactic, we are at war with a real enemy and it is personal.

There are those who would hope to escape the pain of war. Can’t we just live and let live and pretend every thing is OK? Let’s discuss, negotiate, reason together. The film accurately shows an enemy who will stop at nothing in a quest for control. This enemy does not seek our resources, our land or our materials, but rather to alter our very way of life.

I encourage my fellow Americans and free people everywhere to see “United 93."

Be reminded of our very real enemy. Be inspired by a true story of heroic actions taken by ordinary people with victorious consequences. Be thankful for each precious day of life with a loved one and make the most of it. Resolve to take the right action in the situations of life, whatever they may be. Resolve to give thanks and support to those men, women, leaders and commanders who to this day (1,687 days since Sept. 11, 2001) continue the counterattacks on our enemy and in so doing keep us safe and our freedoms intact.

May the taste of freedom for people of the Middle East hasten victory. The enemy we face does not have the word “surrender” in their dictionary. We must not have the word “retreat” in ours. We surely want our troops home as soon as possible. That said, they cannot come home in retreat. They must come home victoriously. Pray for them.

Mr. Beamer is the father of Todd Beamer, a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.

What he said. Especially the last paragraph…

Miki Journal

Miki is our brand-spanking new, 10 week old male field spaniel puppy. Very early this past Sunday morning, we brought Miki home, after an epic trip to pick him up from his breeder (Sheila Miller). He’s now been with us for four days and nights, has gotten to know myself, my lovely wife Debbie, our other two field spaniels (Mo’i and Lea), and most our nine cats. Lots of progress in just a few days. And a most amazingly different experience with our first two field spaniel puppies. For starters, Miki is not making any fuss at night, and we still haven’t had a single “accident” in the house. The experience with Miki is profoundly different, and in entirely positive ways.

If you knew our first two puppies, you’d wonder how this could possibly be. Their heart-rending screams on the first night we had them home and in their crates were impossible for us to withstand — they slept on the bed with us within a few minutes, and the crates were completely forgotten. Our experience with Lea and “accidents” was so vivid that when we bought our new home we made sure we had waterproof padding beneath our all-synthetic carpets — and we were very glad of that when we brought Mo’i home. Neither of them took long to house-train, but in the interim their “production” was prodigious. And emotionally they had us completely wrapped around their little paws. I’m sure they laugh about it even today…

The difference: sticking with the crate training. That’s really the only significant thing we’re doing differently.

Miki made it easy for us on the first night — we put him in his crate, put the crate on a chair in our bedroom (so he could see us), and he settled down after just a few minutes of heart-rending shrieks. I’m not sure if it was our prior experience, Debbie’s much higher level of motivation (she wants Miki trained right for agility), or the glasses of wine we had before bed — but somehow this time we made it through drama boy’s piteous performance. After that, he just shut up and went to sleep. Just like that. And we had a night of peace, as we have each night since. During the day, he spends quite a bit of time in his crate. Miki clearly thinks of it as “his” home; he often goes in voluntarily while playing, and curls up for some rest. Once, one of our cats (Maka Lea) had occupied his crate in his absence, and the discovery of him in there was a shocking and upsetting event for poor little Miki — you could almost hear him say “But but but that’s MINE! Get your sorry, hairy, feline butt out of my crate!” Each time we take Miki out of the crate, we take him immediately outside to do his business — which usually he is quick to do, and much relieved for having done so. Then it’s back inside for some training and some play, then back into the crate he goes (with a little treat as a reward).

Crate training works. We’re believers now, and kicking ourselves for not having perservered with Mo’i and Lea. Sigh.

Miki has started to learn some important lessons already. He’s learned that if you get right in the face of a 45 pound adult male field spaniel, you’re going to get a terrifying set of jaws snapping back at you. He’s learned that if he bites mom or dad too hard, a piercing shriek loud enough to roll you over in a couple of backwards somersaults will be your reward. And he’s learned that if he acts in a manner that any cat deems unacceptable, he’ll hear a demonic hiss that is followed posthaste by the supersonic swipe of a fully-clawed feline paw. In other words, little Miki is learning that the world has some boundaries. He also seems to be just barely beginning to grasp the notion that if he does something that mom or dad likes — or asks for — that a tasty snack is the result. Miki really, really likes those tasty little snacks, too <smile>.

The training of the new owners (Debbie and I) started last night, with the first session of the badly mis-named “Puppy Class”. It really should be called “Remedial Puppy Owner Class” or some such thing; that would be much more accurate. We’re learning how we should behave in order to seduce our puppy into behaving the way we want him to. The instructor, using small words that could be understood by any average California adult (e.g., 3 letters or less), carefully described the basic theory of “puppy training”. So far as I could tell, it all boils down to this: place chunks of the very best corn-fed Iowa beef somewhere between where the puppy is now, and where you want him to be. Each chunk should be approximately one-half the size of the puppy. With a series of a few hundred such bribes (per hour), the puppy will be happy to do whatever you want him to do, until he gets full. I figure we’ll need somewhere between 7 and 9 Angus per week for starters; more when Miki grows up.

To be continued…

The rest of the pictures (click on the small pictures for a larger version):