April 2006 - cypherpunks-legacy

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by Shauna Langley 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

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[Clips] How Patriot Act Helped Convict Man In Baby-Food Ring
by R. A. Hettinga 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 09:12:15 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] How Patriot Act Helped Convict Man In Baby-Food Ring Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB114411067761115987.html> The Wall Street Journal April 4, 2006 PAGE ONE Volatile Formula How Patriot Act Helped Convict Man In Baby-Food Ring Mr. Jammal Faces 10 Years After Terror-Probe Tapes Are Used in Criminal Trial A 14-Minute Rant Against U.S. By JOHN D. MCKINNON April 4, 2006; Page A1 Three months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, police in Tempe, Ariz., began investigating information from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. suggesting that a local grocery wholesaler named Samih Jammal was part of an organized ring stealing baby formula from Wal-Mart stores and trucks. The investigation proceeded uneventfully until shortly after 9/11 when it was turned over to a joint local and federal terrorism task force. Phoenix police, in a written report later provided to Mr. Jammal as part of his prosecution, said they had "confirmed" that he "had significant connections to terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda." At some point after that -- prosecutors won't say precisely when -- authorities got a warrant to tap Mr. Jammal's phone and bug his office. It wasn't an ordinary warrant, the sort routinely authorized by judges in response to applications from police and prosecutors who want to eavesdrop to catch crooks. It was a national-security warrant authorized by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, giving authorities much more leeway, and giving wiretap targets fewer rights. Mr. Jammal, a 36-year-old U.S. citizen born in Lebanon, was never charged with any offense related to terrorism. Yet evidence collected in the FISA eavesdropping played a role in his conviction last April on federal charges focused on fencing stolen baby formula, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His case sits on the fine line between the government's responsibility to go all-out to prevent terrorism and its duty to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens accused of crimes. It's a line that has blurred considerably since 9/11 and the 2001 passage of the Patriot Act. It allows authorities to use FISA wiretaps authorized by special courts not only to gather foreign intelligence but to investigate domestic crimes. Mr. Jammal is appealing, contending that FISA evidence used against him was illegally obtained and crippled his defense. He says the charges against him were trumped up by a government determined to show progress in the war against terror. "It's baby formula of mass destruction here," he said at one pretrial hearing. With an ordinary warrant for electronic surveillance, authorities must show probable cause that the target committed a crime and limit eavesdropping to conversations about crimes. They must also eventually notify those who were bugged (even if they aren't accused of a crime) and must give defendants complete access to the warrant application, court orders and any actual recordings. To get a FISA warrant, in contrast, authorities need to persuade a federal judge that there is probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power such as a terrorist organization. For U.S. citizens, prosecutors also must show that some crime might be involved. Armed with such a warrant, authorities can eavesdrop on any conversation, regardless of whether it involves a crime. They can withhold from defendants the basis for issuing the warrant, hindering legal challenges to the FISA evidence. And they can restrict defendants' access to the classified transcripts and tapes, which makes it harder for the defense to parry the government's charges or mount its own case. The FISA warrant in the Jammal case distinguishes it from the controversial warrantless wiretaps that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct in pursuit of terrorism. Constitutional Question Even with warrants, critics fear defendants' rights to a fair trial will be eroded, as authorities use intelligence-gathering techniques to pursue criminal cases. "If evidence is procured by methods that wouldn't stand up to the Fourth Amendment, the courts are going to have to stop it," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, top Democrat on the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution. Cases like Mr. Jammal's "should be challenged in court," he said. "That kind of thing shouldn't happen." Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman on terror charges in New York, says the old dividing wall between foreign intelligence operations and domestic criminal investigations doesn't make sense in the fight against terrorism. "They usually commit an array of garden-variety crime in the course of trying to conduct terrorism operations," says Mr. McCarthy, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based group that studies national security issues. That means investigating crimes and gathering intelligence through plea bargains and other techniques can be an important tool. Paul Charlton, the U.S. attorney for Arizona whose office brought the case against Mr. Jammal, says in an interview that existing procedures properly balance the rights of defendants with the government's need to maintain secrecy to protect national security. He notes that, as in all FISA cases, a federal judge approved the initial application for the Jammal warrant privately. Prosecutors were "scrupulous" about avoiding suggestions at trial that Mr. Jammal was linked to terrorism, he adds, trying to ensure he got a fair trial. Prior to passage of the Patriot Act, court interpretations required that the "primary" purpose of a FISA warrant had to be gathering foreign intelligence. The Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, broadened the rules so that intelligence gathering need only be a "significant" purpose of wiretapping. Evidence obtained under FISA warrants has been used in a handful of cases involving charges not directly related to terrorism, including at least one immigration proceeding. Mr. Jammal's case shows how much the legal environment changes when FISA wiretaps enter the picture in criminal cases. His first two court-appointed lawyers stepped down in part because the secret tapes required them to get security clearance. Even with such clearance, however, they wouldn't be able to discuss the tapes with their client. His third lawyer, who did get clearance, was able to review only translated summaries, not transcripts, of selected wiretapped conversations. At trial, the government played the jury a recording made under the FISA warrant that proved damaging to Mr. Jammal: a rambling 14-minute diatribe in which he rails against the U.S. government in Arabic, and talks about fleeing to Lebanon if officials came after him for unpaid taxes. The case against Mr. Jammal began in June 2001 when Wal-Mart investigators, frustrated by a rash of baby-formula thefts, gave Tempe police detective Tom O'Brien information about a recent attempted theft in Midland, Texas. For reasons that aren't clear, that led to a police stakeout outside Mr. Jammal's business, located in a warehouse complex in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. Checks of license plates revealed people with shoplifting records showing up to do business with Mr. Jammal. Sent to U.S. for College Mr. Jammal grew up in Lebanon and Kuwait. His father owned fruit and vegetable export firms, a farm, a small phone company and a school, according to Mr. Jammal. The family was prosperous enough to send Mr. Jammal to the U.S. in 1988 to study at West Virginia's Marshall University, named after the nation's first chief justice, John Marshall. Wiry and athletic, Mr. Jammal played for a while on the school's soccer team. The family businesses suffered in the early 1990s, and Mr. Jammal began working odd jobs to put himself through school, according to Mr. Jammal's wife, Gretchen, who grew up in Ohio and whom he met while attending Marshall. After college, Mr. Jammal gravitated toward the business of selling baby-formula on the advice of a friend, and moved to Arizona starting in 1994 to live near a cousin and savor the warmer weather. Mr. Jammal joined a number of other entrepreneurs -- some of Middle Eastern origin -- who were buying up large quantities of formula at big chain stores, which often sold it as a loss leader. The brokers then sold to wholesalers who, in turn, resold to smaller retailers, who often served low-income families participating in federal food-aid programs. None of this is illegal, although some manufacturers raised concerns about the practice. Taking baby formula out of the original packages and repackaging for resale can be a crime, however. In 1998, Mr. Jammal pleaded guilty to a single charge of improper repackaging of baby formula. He got three years' probation and a $1,000 fine. Big retailers and formula manufacturers sought to choke off the gray market in baby formula -- for instance, by limiting the amount of formula that could be purchased off-the-shelf at one time. Still, Mr. Jammal's business, Jamal Trading Co., thrived. He says he took advantage of loss leaders at big-box stores and also distributed cereals, juices, diapers and other grocery items. He opened several small retail stores in Arizona. In May 2003, unaware that he had been secretly indicted, he moved his family into a $550,000 suburban home in Mesa, Ariz., where he kept a dozen sheep and goats. Meanwhile, federal authorities say they got interested in Mr. Jammal in October 2001 when they happened to overhear him on a Drug Enforcement Agency wiretap of Osamah Yacoub, an immigrant from Jerusalem who was living in Houston. The two were talking about the baby-formula business, Mr. Charlton, the U.S. attorney said. Mr. Yacoub later pleaded guilty to a charge related to methamphetamine trafficking and cooperated with the government in its prosecution of Mr. Jammal. Around the same time, according to a Phoenix police affidavit, a confidential informant told authorities that Mr. Jammal was trying to "facilitate the release of a non-U.S. citizen who was in federal custody" -- Malek Seif -- and smuggle him to Mexico. Mr. Seif later pleaded guilty to falsifying immigration and Social Security records. Through one of his appeal lawyers, Mr. Jammal said the story is not true. "Someone made it up," said the lawyer, Scott MacPherson. A 9/11 Hijacker at Mosque Federal authorities won't say exactly what led to Mr. Jammal's case being turned over to the terrorism task force. Mr. Jammal suspects one factor was that he and Mr. Seif attended a Tempe mosque where one of the 9/11 hijackers worshipped briefly -- Hani Hanjour, a Saudi Arabian who was aboard the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon. Mr. Jammal, who says he has no sympathies with terrorism, says he expressed skepticism about Mr. Hanjour's culpability when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents came to the mosque shortly after 9/11. Beginning in December 2001, authorities devised a sting aimed at Mr. Jammal and his associates. Mead Johnson, a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and maker of the Enfamil brand, gave police posing as middlemen baby formula to sell to Jamal Trading Co., representing it as stolen. Mr. Jammal didn't buy formula directly in the sting, and typically insisted that associates get signed statements attesting that any formula they bought wasn't stolen. But police did sell 1,400 cases from the back of a Wal-Mart truck to Mr. Jammal's partner in several businesses, an Egyptian-born businessman named Tamer Swailem, in May 2002. Testifying against Mr. Jammal, Mr. Swailem said he expressed misgivings to Mr. Jammal about buying the formula in a cellphone conversation. "It didn't feel right....[but] finally we decided just to go ahead and have him [the agent] sign the paper," Mr. Swailem said. Mr. Jammal, who didn't testify at this trial, says in an interview that he told Mr. Swailem to "get the hell out" if he believed the formula in the truck was stolen. In March 2003, Mr. Jammal was indicted secretly. Although the government refuses to say when it tapped Mr. Jammal's phones and bugged his office under the FISA warrant, summaries of about 20 conversations introduced in criminal proceedings against Mr. Jammal date from May and June 2003. Clifford Fishman, a Catholic University law professor who has studied wiretap laws, says using FISA-authorized wiretaps to bolster an already pending criminal case "would be a clear misuse of the law." A spokeswoman for Mr. Charlton, the prosecutor, said that the "basis for the FISA intercept was unrelated to [Mr. Jammal's] involvement in organized retail theft," adding that it was conducted by a separate investigative team. She said officials can't reveal reasons for seeking the FISA warrant. Mr. Jammal was arrested in July 2003, and charged with eight felony counts including interstate transportation of stolen property. The government now says that of the 27 defendants in the case, 22 were arrested; 18 pleaded guilty and four of them so far have been deported, while others are pending deportation; and four others including Mr. Jammal were convicted at trial. Federal prosecutors used declassified conversations recorded under the FISA warrants to argue successfully that he should be jailed awaiting trial. They said his expressed interest in running for the Lebanese parliament proved that he had no strong ties to the U.S. As Mr. Jammal's trial approached, the FISA-authorized wiretaps also posed difficulties for his court-appointed lawyer, Michael Reeves. The government insisted that Mr. Reeves obtain security clearance to examine classified evidence in the case and agree not to talk about the evidence with anyone, even his client. Mr. Reeves's doubts deepened when he got a look at the security-clearance application. Under penalty of perjury, it asked detailed information "like 'Have you ever missed a mortgage payment?' " Mr. Reeves recalls. "It made me nervous." Ashcroft Weighed In While Mr. Reeves pondered the matter, he asked the court to order the government either to reveal the basis for issuing the FISA warrant so he could challenge its legality or bar the evidence altogether. The government countered with an affidavit from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft who said telling defense lawyers why the FISA warrant was issued "would harm the national security." The federal trial judge, Frederick J. Martone, sided with the government. Judge Martone allowed Mr. Reeves to withdraw and appointed Michael Smith of Mesa to take his place. But he, too, eventually pulled out, arguing that serving as an effective advocate for Mr. Jammal meant sharing the FISA evidence with his client -- something that would expose Mr. Smith to prosecution. In October 2004, Judge Martone named Robert Kavanagh, a former Phoenix police officer, to represent Mr. Jammal. Mr. Jammal says Mr. Kavanagh inherited from the previous lawyers only a few CD's -- apparently a small portion of the surveillance videos that were made outside his client's warehouse -- plus a largely inaudible tape recording of one of the FISA conversations. With time running out and no more delays possible before the trial, Mr. Kavanagh, who had obtained a security clearance, reviewed classified summaries of some wiretapped conversations, prepared by FBI translators and agents. But he says he was unable to review many conversations. The government was free to offer any declassified FISA-obtained evidence in its case against Mr. Jammal, and the defense also could use that material. Federal rules require prosecutors to turn over any evidence that might help the defense. Government lawyers didn't go through all the tapes, many of which recorded conversations in Arabic, but "reviewed all translated summaries of the FISA intercepts and found no exculpatory evidence," the U.S. attorney says. At one point during the trial, Judge Martone questioned how the government could fulfill its obligation to turn over material favorable to the defense. "There isn't any lawyer who's making this judgment," the judge complained during one conference with lawyers, a transcript shows. But he allowed the government to use FISA-gathered evidence anyhow. Seeking Help From Tapes Mr. Jammal insists a review of the voluminous, classified FISA evidence would show that he warned would-be sellers that he would not accept stolen property. He also says that the tapes could have helped undercut the testimony of former associates who agreed to plea bargains and testified against him. Mr. Charlton, the U.S. attorney, counters that seven witnesses testified to Mr. Jammal's guilt. The government introduced evidence, for example, that Mr. Jammal was told by an associate that at least one supplier was stealing. Prosecutors also argued that Mr. Jammal should have known from the prices he was paying that he was buying stolen goods. Over defense objections, the prosecution played for the jury a conversation recorded under the FISA warrant -- Mr. Jammal's 14-minute rant from June 26, 2003, about his sense that the government was after him, even though he didn't know he'd already been indicted. "I'm trying to establish a business in Lebanon, because I know 80% to 90% that the day will come when the American government is going to come and ask me for taxes," he said, according to a translation presented in court. "OK, that's why, when that day comes, I'll tell them, 'F- you!' Then take everything, I'll pick up everything and go to Lebanon." Jurors took six hours to convict Mr. Jammal and other defendants on most of the charges. A few days before his sentencing hearing in October, Mr. Jammal fired off a 43-page letter to civil-rights groups, hoping to generate interest in his appeal, and copied Judge Martone. "I fail to see how my conversation concerning the baby formula business could qualify as 'foreign intelligence,' " he wrote. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Notification: Loww ratess
by Dudley Dejesus 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

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/. [Australian Parliament Approves Email Snooping]
by Eugen Leitl 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/04/0551201 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2006-04-04 06:40:00 brindafella writes "The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, reporting on a legislative change last week, says 'the [Australian] Government [1]will have 12 months to access communications not only between the B-party and the suspect, but also between the B-party and anyone else. If you have unwittingly communicated with a suspect (and thereby become a B-party), the Government may be able to monitor all your conversations with family members, friends, work colleagues, your lawyer and your doctor.' The Australian Parliament's major parties combined to pass an [2]amendment to the [3]Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Act 1979." References 1. http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/more-than-ever-watch-what-you-say/2006/0… 02/1143916406540.html 2. http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/Repository/Legis/Bills/Linked/17110430.… f 3. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1979350/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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by Lindsey Barrett 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

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New Dark Freenet (0.7a1)
by Justin 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

http://freenetproject.org/ Unfortunately, it's still in java... written once bloated everywhere. -- The six phases of a project: I. Enthusiasm. IV. Search for the Guilty. II. Disillusionment. V. Punishment of the Innocent. III. Panic. VI. Praise & Honor for the Nonparticipants.

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Application approval #WMTFXL622412979967051
by Josiah Aaron 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

1 0

[Clips] Tribal Politics
by R. A. Hettinga 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 20:36:23 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Tribal Politics Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=040306B> TCS Daily - Tribal Politics By Arnold Kling : BIO| 03 Apr 2006 "Suppose you could give American high school dropouts a 1000% raise by exterminating every man, woman, and child in Latin America. Would that be the right thing to do? No? Why not? Your answer, hopefully, is that murder is wrong, even if it financially benefits low-skilled Americans. In fact, when you put it that way, it's hard not to exclaim, 'What's so great about low-skilled Americans? Are they the master race, in whose service any crime is justified?' OK, suppose you could give American high school dropouts an 8% raise by deporting every man, woman, and child from Latin America back to their home countries. Would that be the right thing to do?" -- Bryan Caplan In today's political discourse, the term "Nazi" serves no intellectual purpose. It is merely an epithet, used to indicate anger. Calling someone a Nazi is like calling someone a bleeping bleep. For me, this creates a problem of terminology. I want to describe the beliefs of someone like George Bush, who worries about "national competitiveness" (fear the peril of Asian scientists!) and who wants No (American) Child Left Behind. I want to describe the beliefs of someone like Paul Krugman, who is worried about the wages of "our" unskilled workers, or who wants "our" health care to be paid for by taxes. What should you call someone who wants government to provide for our education, competitiveness, and health care but whose concern about "us" stops at the border? The obvious label would be national socialist. But George Bush and Paul Krugman are not Nazis. So, I need an alternative term. Call their ideology statist-collectivist. Transnational Libertarianism The alternative ideology that I would propose might be called transnational libertarianism. The ideal libertarian world would have no economic borders. There would be no problem of illegal immigration, because all forms of immigration would be legal. If transnational libertarianism were to become sufficiently popular to emerge as the ideology that determines the world's institutions, then governments would be local rather than national. Their main role would be to prevent outbreaks of violence among individuals or groups. In the nightclub of life, government would be the bouncer, not the owner or the manager or the dance instructor or the disk jockey. Transnational libertarianism would be based on a system of individual rights, like our Bill of Rights. The purpose of individual rights is solely to protect individuals from abuse of government power. We would not have a "right to health care" or a "right to education." We would have rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association. I would like to see these individual rights made fully portable, so that freedom of movement becomes a basic right. I would like to see Hispanics free to live and work in the United States, Palestinian Arabs free to live and work in Israel, and Jews free to live and work in Palestinian territory or other Arab lands. Individuals would have the right to choose to live under strict religious law. However, no one could be forced to live under strict religious law. Any conflict between religious law and the basic rights of the individual would be resolved in favor of the rights of the individual. Individuals would have the right to associate only with people who have similar ethnic origins, although I believe it is in one's best interest instead to have an inclusive set of associates. What is important is that government not engage in or support ethnic discrimination. Governments should be strong enough to protect basic rights, and no stronger. Today's national governments are too strong. A "world government" that is even stronger would be a transnational libertarian's worst nightmare. Local governments, with plenty of checks and balances, would be better. To improve accountability and reduce government over-reach, I have suggested breaking up the United States into 250 states. Tribal Identity I believe that people have a strong need for tribal identity. We want to belong to a group that has common customs and rituals that distinguish the group from other groups. One sees this phenomenon at work in all forms of human social organizations, from ethnic groups to sports fans to religions to corporate departments to professional associations. Tribal identity motivates people to help others. People naturally join clubs, religious organizations, and other groups. In the absence of strong national governments, these associations could share resources in order to alleviate problems among their members, satisfying the needs that today are answered by the welfare state. Tribal identity is a mixed blessing. For those people who belong to groups where norms include resistance to work, school, or responsibility, one could argue that tribal identity is a handicap. Tribal identity is used to motivate people to engage in violence against outsiders. Tribal identity is one of the reasons that we need bouncers in the nightclub of life. Politicians in nation-states attempt to use tribal identity to foster cohesion. In my view, they do this all too well. One result is that statist-collectivist ideology has a deep hold on most of us. Often, as in the case of Paul Krugman's recent writing on immigration, tribal identity is mixed with folk Marxism. Another consequence of tribal identity is war. Statist collectivism elevates tribal war to a colossal scale. However, pacifism is no refuge in a world where violence based on tribal identity is often unchecked and many individual thugs as well as mass movements are prepared to trample individual rights. The Internet Example I do not expect the world to move toward transnational libertarianism in the foreseeable future. Right now, other ideologies predominate. Islamofascism, an ideology of tribal domination, is very prominent. Transnational progressivism, which favors world government and socialism, is the opposite of transnational libertarianism. And then there is statist collectivism, which is far more popular than transnational libertarianism. I am cautiously hopeful that the trend might be away from statist collectivism and toward transnational libertarianism. This hope is based on the Internet. First, the Internet itself serves to demonstrate the workability of an institution that relies relatively heavily on individual rights and responsibilities and relatively little on national government. On the Internet, borders tend to be highly porous, and in fact this is contributing to the increased porousness of borders in general, as is illustrated by the phenomenon of overseas outsourcing of service work. Second, the Internet provides a medium that can be used to counter statist-collectivist propaganda. The mass-market media of the twentieth century were easily and naturally drawn into the service of politicians with statist-collectivist agendas. The Internet has allowed other voices to challenge the mainstream media, and perhaps some day this will challenge the hegemony of mainstream politicians. My point is not that we can expect soon to see transnational libertarianism put into practice. However, I do think that it represents a more positive vision for society than statist collectivism. I think that with the medium of the Internet available, those of us who believe in transnational libertarianism are better able to articulate our views. As the Internet continues to take hold, it will become more difficult to dismiss libertarianism than was the case during the era dominated by mass media. The Immigration Issue Back in the real world, the immigration issue raises some concerns. First, there is the issue of assimilation. My idea of an assimilated immigrant is someone with a strong commitment to the Bill of Rights, separation of powers, and federalism. My opinion is that immigrants who are fleeing from ethnic cleansing or political repression are more likely to assimilate, because with a first-hand experience of tyranny they can really appreciate American liberty and ideals. I would not want to see economically-motivated immigrants or guest workers crowd out the more desperate refugees from other parts of the world. Another concern I have with either immigration or guest workers is reconciliation with our welfare state. We do not want immigration or guest work to be a way to extract benefits from the welfare state, such as Medicaid or public education. But I think we want guest workers to pay taxes. One approach, which is rather harsh, would be to tell guest workers that they have to pay taxes that help support Social Security, Medicaid, and public schools, but they are not allowed to obtain benefits from any of these programs. If we lived in a transnational libertarian utopia, the issue of immigration policy would be simple. Open borders would be the right approach. There would be no concern with immigrants coming to take advantage of our welfare state, because we would not have one. But we do not live in a transnational libertarian utopia. For now, immigration policy must cater to the inclinations of national socialists. Arnold Kling is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute and author of Learning Economics. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Pre-approved Application #pjfgugwL80330
by Socorro Rojas 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

1 0