An Idea For Newark's Mayor

I was driving through Coldwater Canyon here in LA and I noticed a sign that proclaimed that Beverly Hills was the "Sister City" of Cannes, France. 'That's appropriate' I thought, and it gave me an idea.

Since Newark New Jersey's Mayor Cory Booker refuses to uphold the law, even while illegals are murdering kids in his own city, let's make the lovely city of Newark the "sister city" of Tijuana, Mexico. The two cities have so much in common.


Both cities are a hot bed for criminal activity of all kinds. Corruption infiltrates all levels of local government. Both cities smell funny and they are both through ways for people who are trying to get to someplace nicer.

There are differences however. The unemployment rate in Tijuana is 40% while Newark's stands at roughly 12%. Also, underage kids don't go to Newark to drink, probably because they're less likely to get shot in Tijuana.

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The Elvira Arellano Celebrity Tour

This is really unbelievable.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican Senate committee passed a measure Wednesday urging President Felipe Calderon to send a diplomatic note to the United States protesting the deportation of an illegal migrant who took refuge in a Chicago church for a year.
The committee also approved a scholarship to help her 8-year-old U.S.-born son, Saul, who is an American citizen and stayed in the United States.

Elvira Arellano, 32, became an activist and a national symbol for illegal immigrant parents by defying her deportation order and speaking out from her sanctuary in the Adalberto United Methodist Church. She announced last week that she was leaving to try to lobby U.S. lawmakers for immigration reform.

On Sunday, shortly after she spoke at a rally in a Los Angeles church, she was arrested and deported to Tijuana, across the border from San Diego.

"We cannot remain quiet in view of this injustice and must ask for firm action from our authorities," Mexican Sen. Humberto Zazue said.

Arellano, who was at the committee's session, said Saul is in Chicago in the care of his godmother and will attend a Sept. 12 rally for immigration reform in Washington. She said she would help organize a rally in Tijuana that same day to demand Mexican authorities do more to protect migrants.

"For me it is very important that our government take a strong stand to defend all of us who decide to migrate to another country," she said.

What!? Why doesn't Mexico "decide" to fix their own corrupt country so millions of its citizens don't want to illegally move here.

This Arellano lady, is a perfect representative of Mexico's government. Both morally and economically corrupt. (She used a phony, Social Security number to get a job.)

This situation, as well as the Newark murders represent the turning point in the immigration debate.

Mexico's lazy legislature better stop flapping their lips unless they want their precious safety valve of "sanctuary cities" and endless remittances shut down for good. That's the direction we're headed because the American people are quickly becoming outraged by an issue that a few years ago could only be described as a minor concern, if it was on the American people's radar at all.

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John Stossel: Libertarian Leader

Stossel has seemingly found his niche as a champion of Libertarian causes. Here's a recent article by the mustachioed journalist on the misleading nature of the left's crusade in favor of a single-payer health care system.


August 22, 2007
Why the U.S. Ranks Low on WHO's Health-Care Study
By John Stossel

The New York Times recently declared "the disturbing truth ... that ... the United States is a laggard not a leader in providing good medical care."

As usual, the Times editors get it wrong.

They find evidence in a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May.

In the WHO rankings, the United States finished 37th, behind nations like Morocco, Cyprus and Costa Rica. Finishing first and second were France and Italy. Michael Moore makes much of this in his movie "Sicko."

The Commonwealth Fund looked at Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and ranked the U.S. last or next to last on all but one criterion.

So the verdict is in. The vaunted U.S. medical system is one of the worst.

But there's less to these studies than meets the eye. They measure something other than quality of medical care. So saying that the U.S. finished behind those other countries is misleading.

First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.

So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.

Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.

When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.

Another reason the U.S. didn't score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it's crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.

It's when this so-called "fairness," a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.

Remember John Stossel? The mustachioed journalist gained

The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.

Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.

For all its problems, the U.S. ranks at the top for quality of care and innovation, including development of life-saving drugs. It "falters" only when the criterion is proximity to socialized medicine.

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Vacation

I'm taking the next couple of weeks off in order to attend the Yearly Kos Convention. Just Kidding!!!! I love America!

Be back in a couple of weeks with more commentary and hopefully a presidential endorsement, IF SOME PEOPLE WOULD GET IN THE DAMN RACE! Hint hint.

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