A Historical Perspective on Electric Utility Regulation - just what I've been looking for: a sweeping examination of the long run-up to today's electricity mess. Informative.

Positive Atheism's Big List of H. L. Mencken Quotations -- loads of fun.

Misdiagnosing Earth by Ronald Bailey, Reason Science Correspondent - how the UN and the Worldwatch Institute cherry-pick bad news and ignore good news on the world's economy, ecology, and trends.

On Energy, Markets Work - by Bruce Bartlett An excellent exploration of how energy efficiency goes hand-in-hand with market efficiency.

Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 18:52:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: tbcox23@yahoo.com | Block Address | Add to Address Book
Subject: Re: Fear and the use of force (was Re: China) (fwd)
To: paulcox@marlboro.edu, jim.cox@mindspring.com, johnfcox@aol.com
CC: rockers@med.stanford.edu

My Yahoo mail limits messages to 10k so I have
to take this in bites. Sorry.

--- Paul Adams Cox wrote:
> More importantly, FEAR AND THE THREAT OF FORCE -LEAD-
> TO COOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR. I didn't write this stuff.
> Ask any biologist, zoologist, or
> economist who is current in his field.

> But just because fear is necessary for
> cooperative behavior doesn't mean
> we all need nuclear warheads rammed up
> our nostrils to keep us in line.

No, here I disagree with Paul.

Cooperation can ALWAYS arise in a scenario
where neither person can initiate force
upon the other. It is not guaranteed
to arise, but it can.

However, one element MUST be present: the
ability of each party to stop playing
and go home when he wants to.

As long as the transaction is win-win,
is repeated over time, and each person
can detect cheating, then cooperation is
actually pretty common.

However, as soon as one person can FORCE
the other to play the game, that person
no longer needs to keep up his end -- he
can just take from the other.

David, your error lies in thinking that
if everybody is aggressive, we can get
bad outcomes. Quite the contrary -- it's
when only one or two are aggressive that
we get bad outcomes. Once all parties
are equally able to meet force with equal
force that the advantage goes away and
we are free to try to cooperate again.

So the next bit that Paul wrote is right:

> All it means is that peace and order is
> kept -- on some level -- through
> the threat of force.

Mostly true. The exception comes from
people who are powerless to harm each other,
and only have the choices of "cooperate",
"cheat", and "stop".

Once a single person gets the choice
to "aggress", he gets to take without
giving until the other people also get
the option to respond with force. Then
we can return to peace.

Keep trying, David. How long have you
been a Utopian Socialist?

-Tom

Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 18:40:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: tbcox23@yahoo.com | Block Address | Add to Address Book
Subject: Re: Fear and the use of force (was Re: China) (fwd)
To: paulcox@marlboro.edu, jim.cox@mindspring.com, johnfcox@aol.com
CC: rockers@med.stanford.edu

Forgive my late entry into this conversation. I have two brief
comments:

> On Wed, 23 May 2001, David J. Raynor wrote:
> > For every example you can come up with to make them seem worse
> (they
> > gassed the Kurds), I can come up with something just as bad on our
> > side (we nuked the Japanese). For every rationalization you can
> give
> > our actions (we had to win the war), I can come up with one for
> them
> > equally ridiculous (they had to put down the uprising). We can do
> that
> > for a year and a day, and it doesn't change the basic fact: it's a
> > stupid, horrific murderous system.

Why is nuking the Japanese the same as gassing Kurds? It's not.
1. The Japanese declared war on us, not the other way around.
2. They could have surrendered earlier. They didn't.
3. The Japanese military was starving civilians to feed soldiers.
Hundreds of thousands of Okinawan civilians died of hunger
before the Marines took the island. Without nukes to shorten
the war, we would have seen tens of millions of Japanese civilians
dead of starvation before the conventional-war invasion
would have stopped their deaths -- more than the six million
Jews that Hitler killed. That's separate from the over one
million US casualties expected.
4. The PURPOSE of the wars were different -- Iraq to suppress
and oppress a minority, the US to defend itself from aggression
and end a genocidal militaristic dictatorship.

Legitimacy of any government comes from the consent of the governed.
No act of force by a dictator against his own people is moral.
Only certain acts of force by a democracy against its own people
can be moral -- such acts must follow laws that are themselves
moral (i.e. they fit with the natural rights theory, i.e. only
the amount of force necessary to restrain one person from harming
another is okay).

> > It is perpetuated because y'all in
> > the "security" arena, whether here or in Iraq, China, wherever,
> think
> > that you are doing something high-minded, providing security,
> creating
> > peace....when you are really just doing exactly what you loathe in
> > your "enemies;" murdering, maiming, raping so that your country can
> be
> > "better" than the one with the towelheads or the chinks.
> >
> > And whenever someone suggests that that needs to stop and we need
> to
> > start behaving like civilized people, you have a flawed
> pseudo-science
> > called security studies to explain why people can't get along
> unless
> > we all have guns pointed at our heads, because we bond into groups
> out
> > of fear like the klu klux klan (your characterization, not mine).

> We bond into groups because it has been necessary for the propagation
> of
> the species. Why is that necessary? Because there is safety in
> numbers.
> Why do groups cooperate? Because they have a better chance of
> survival
> than by backstabbing each other all the time.
>
> But if you give any creature the chance to get away with something
> because
> you've taken away the fear of retribution, then you lose the
> cooperative
> behavior. Happens every time.
>
> More importantly, FEAR AND THE THREAT OF FORCE -LEAD- TO COOPERATIVE
> BEHAVIOR. I didn't write this stuff. Ask any biologist, zoologist,
> or
> economist who is current in his field.

Dave, you're saying that all the nasty violence will end
just as soon as we realize it can stop.

Paul is saying that it'll start again just as soon as
someone realizes he can start.

You think all we need to do is cooperate.

Paul is pointing out that cooperation requires the ability
to opt out if the other guy is screwing you, and the
ability to resist him if he initiates aggression.

Your beautiful utopian thinking cannot handle free
riders or defectors. Your vision only works when everyone
cooperates all the time. Since people have the ability
to be greedy, stupid, selfish, and hurtful, the only
way we can achieve your utopia is by having powerful
governments that FORCE everybody to cooperate.
At gunpoint.

Ooops! Governments are run by people, and people have
the ability to be greedy, stupid, selfish, and hurtful...
so your utopia becomes a Stalinist nightmare.
Congrats.

Find me a way to guarantee that everyone cooperates,
nobody defects, and nobody aggresses, WITHOUT having
an oppressive governmental force that prevents it
at gunpoint, and you win.

Fail to find that way, and Paul wins.

See also "The Origins of Virtue" by Matt Ridley
and "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior"
by von Neumann, J. and Morgenstern, O. (1953).

Cheers.
-Tom


=====
Thomas B. Cox
tbcox23@yahoo.com http://www.geocities.com/tbcox23/

"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty.
When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Some scary stuff from Reason:

"Privacy laws allow high-risk insurees to lie about their health in order to get more money. This means that healthier customers will have to be charged more to pay for their high-risk counterparts. This situation can set off an adverse selection spiral in which low-risk clients flee the higher premiums and high-risk clients flock to buy the insurance. As premiums rise to cover the unhealthy clients, fewer and fewer people can afford insurance.

"Are purchasers of insurance really all that savvy? Absolutely. In 1992, New York State passed a "community rating" law in an effort to bring down insurance prices. The New York law forbade insurers from offering lower rates to companies with younger, healthier employees--the effect of which was to increase rates for those workers. Faced with higher rates, large numbers of younger workers simply dropped their coverage, leaving relatively unhealthy oldsters to fend for themselves. The result was higher rates and fewer people covered by health insurance. The same problem also plagued recent attempts to do the same with the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan and the California Public Employees Retirement System."

Before I forget: the Running with Scissors Relay was especially well received. People got excited, cheered the runners, the whole bit. Several people (maybe half) were really keen on waving signs at passing cars. I think we had a presence at the curb for maybe 90 minutes out of the two-hour event.

After we were done at 3, several people took signs and walked over to the Dalai Lama Greeting event over at Pioneer Square, which was truly huge -- 20,000 people was the claim, and certainly the streets were closed a block or two in every direction, and I could see a pretty good crowd spilling out of the Square. By MMom standards, that's gotta be 20 million people. (By their counting standard, we had 34,000 people at our event.)

The rally is over. Hurrah. I had some bad moments when I was afraid nobody would show up except my wife, me, and my friend Richard. At five minutes to 1 p.m. we were the only ones in the park.

Luckily it was just a slow start. Street parking was very hard to find (I was surprised to discover) and that slowed most people down a bit. By 1:30 we had 26 people, and by about 2:15 we had 34 -- pretty decent turnout, and at the high end of the 20-to-30 people estimate that I pulled out of my ass.

We had two press people show up, one from Channel 4 (or 2?) TV news, and one from AM 860 radio news. If I have the energy I want to do some post-event publicity, maybe a press release, but mostly I need to focus on my job. Ah, to have time to devote to activism...

Part of another letter to the same friend:

> > Bwah hah hah. You've swallowed some serious
> > propaganda along with your history.

> Well, at the risk of getting slammed, a lot of my
> views are from my family. My Grandmother worked in a
> sweatshop in the garment district in New York and my
> Grandfather was a union organizer in the Southern
> textile mills in the 1930's. They saw a lot and I
> believe what they said. The history I've read has
> merely reinforced them.

I'd draw a distinction between what they saw, and
what they might have told you was the cause of what
they saw. I'm sure a union organizer would have
(indeed would need) a specific world view to energize
his work, and that world view may not be useful to you
or even accurate in determining cause and effect.

In other words, yes they surely saw some terrible working
conditions. No, I would dispute any claim they or you
might make that capitalism or free markets "cause" such
things.

On a related note, I fully support the ability of workers
to form unions -- that's protected "freedom of association".
I don't support union-only shops, because that forces people
to join unions (i.e. forced association) against their will
as a condition of employment.

> > Yes, the wealthy few will
> > want
> > to force the weak to remain weak, and will use force
> > to
> > get and keep an unfair advantage. But what is their
> >
> > primary instrument of force?

> Guns, in some cases. Poverty and desperation in
> others.

Try "government". The union-busting efforts of the 1880s
through the 1930s relied heavily on police and even the
Army in some places.

> > Contrast that with the infamous "company towns"

> > Actual free markets, which I advocate, can only
> > exist
> > inside a framework of laws, such as property rights,
> > contract law, and a rock-solid guarantee that every
> > person is entitled to live free from coercion,
> > force, and the threat of force.

> Who's going to enforce the laws that keep everything
> fair and free? The government ;-)?

Obviously, yes. That's the reason we have a government:
to impartially and equally enforce the laws. We created
it "to secure these rights" of life, liberty, etc. -- rights
that existed before government, rights that all people have,
"endowed by their Creator". These basic human rights are
natural rights, that we are born with and that no power can
rightfully take from us.

> > Do big companies defend free markets? No, almost
> > never.

> I'm with you on the corporate welfare, obviously. It
> kills me that government is subsidising companies for
> going overseas and taking American jobs with them.

Most of the Overseas Development money goes to domestic
makers of export goods, i.e. not "taking ... jobs"
anywhere. They are nevertheless bad uses of tax dollars,
in my opinion.

> My concern is primarily that as our manufacturing base
> goes overseas our economy is eroding from the ground
> up. I know we are told the economy is good (and has
> been for 8 or so years), but it seemed to be an
> artificial balloon, because of the exodus of
> manufacturing jobs. How can a country's economy have
> a firm foundation if all it produces are lawyers and
> journalists??

Ah, you're repeating the old mistake of believing that
only manufacturing jobs are "real" -- that if we don't
make a lot of physical objects, and if we don't employ
a lot of people in the process, then there's something
deeply wrong or unsustainable.

At the time of NAFTA first getting passed, a typical
American manufacturing worker was earning ten times
what a Mexican manufacturing worker was earning.

Several years later, the American was still making ten
times what the Mexican was making. As it turned out, the
American was ten times MORE PRODUCTIVE per hour of labor
(due to skills, training, capital investments, personal
work ethic, whatever), so getting paid ten times more was
perfectly reasonable.

The wages of labor should reflect the productivity of
that labor. Nobody has a right to cash any more than I
have a right to a ham sandwich. I may have the right
to TRY to get one, and the right to keep one once I get
it, but there are no Constitutional positive entitlements,
and no positive natural rights (positive meaning someone
has to actively give you something). All natural rights
are negative -- people have to refrain from harming you.

Another fact for you: in the past twenty years, as the number
of American manufacturing jobs has dropped, the total dollar
value of all American manufacturing output has... gone up.
We are making more and more stuff using fewer and fewer
hours of labor -- which is the DEFINITION of productivity.

As you become an ever more experienced teacher you will
be able to create lesson plans more quickly. You will
become more productive.

> What would libertarianism do to attract or keep
> manufacturing jobs in the US? What would they do
> about competition from cheap foreign labor in
> countries where the government condones (and in
> China's case runs) slave labor? How can an American
> who wants to make $15 or $18 an hour compete with
> workers in countries where people make $1 a day or
> less? Does your philosophy have a solution?

I wouldn't do anything to either attract or repel any
job. I wouldn't use the taxing or coercive powers of
the government to try to pick and choose which
companies should go where. This is for two reasons.

First, it's a dreadful value for money. Kentucky
at one point was trying to lure a car maker into the
state by promising tax breaks that would have amounted
to over $100,000 per job per year, for jobs that paid
under $50,000 a year. So the car maker would have been
directly profiting, and the taxpayers directly subsidizing,
to zero benefit (indeed to a substantial deficit) for the
state. Stupid. But politicians (a) are not playing with
their own money and (b) are not that bright.

Second, it's a great way to cover up payoffs, kickbacks,
and all sorts of preferential treatment. It puts a big
"for sale" sign on the government. Cozy up to this or
that politician, and hey presto, you get the "job creation"
tax break that your competitor doesn't get. It's just
bad policy.

Government acts can only move jobs around, not create
them (in the sense we are discussing here). And they
tend to pay good money for doing it -- money that you
and I no longer have in our pockets to (say) buy
clothing, food, etc.

> What would you do about the people who are simply not
> intelligent enough to be trained for high end new
> economy jobs? I know there are many people like that.
> My husband's an electrician and, although he has a
> very high IQ, about half the guys he works with are
> Neanderthal's. Yet, they still have families to feed.

Here is where we get into math. Sorry about this.

Take two workers and two goods. These are the only workers
and the only goods in the world. Steven King can create
novels and songs, and Courtney Love can create novels and
songs. King can crank out 20 novels or 10 songs in a year.
Love can produce 8 songs or 4 novels in a year. All
songs and novels are of the same quality. Songs and
novels sell for the same amount.

What should each one do with their time? If each
specializes in what s/he does best, the world gets
20 King novels and 8 Love songs == 28 units of
entertainment. If each devotes the year to what
s/he does worst, the world gets 4 Love novels and
10 King songs = 14 units of entertainment.

If they each go 50-50 for the year, then the world
enjoys 12 novels (10 King + 2 Love), and 9 songs
(5 King + 4 Love) = 21 units of entertainment
for the year.

Notice that, EVEN THOUGH KING IS MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN
LOVE at Love's own strength, songs, every King
song comes at the cost of two King novels that
didn't get written.

Are you following this? Is it making sense?

The POINT of this is that people, and countries,
and cities, and regions of countries, will naturally
over time tend to specialize in things. I do not
think we'll ever see the day when Brazil does
nothing but produce coffee (i.e. no 100% national
specialization), but certainly people do that all
the time, and certainly there are many countries
that import ALL of their (say) transistor radios,
or loufa brushes, or whatever.

When government tries to "lure" or "attract"
certain jobs to certain places, they're basically
trying to get King to write more songs, because
all the song jobs have "left" for Love. Eeek!
The domestic song industry is being decimated!
To which I say, so what?

As for the Neanderthals you mention, there will
always be something out there that needs doing,
because as we non-Neanderthals become richer,
we find more and more things we want to have
done for us. Physical therapy and massage.
Eating out. Personal trainers. Whatever. As
long as there are people who have stuff, they
will want to exchange their stuff for either
other stuff or services. The only true apocalyptic
scenario is if all the rich people decide to cut
their power lines and huddle in their mansions and
eat their emergency rations for ten years. And
even then, the rest of us will live our lives
and find things to do.

> > The way to stop it is to outlaw special treatment.
> > Then politicians can't sell that special treatment
> > to the highest bidder.

> > But as soon as you open the door to special
> > treatment,
> > subsidies, handouts, assistance, etc., you guarantee
> > that the bulk of that money will go to the powerful
> > and the politically well connected.
> >
> > The only way to allow government handouts and NOT
> > have them get abused is to have a government of
> > angels, and as Lincoln said, if we had a government
> > of angels, we wouldn't need laws.
>
> So, if I understand you, your position is that
> government help is a bad idea because the government
> can't possibly do it fairly? I won't argue with that
> from the standpoint that it certainly hasn't done a
> great job so far, but what's the solution? "Free
> markets" sound like a catch phrase, but when I hear
> that, I think "anarchy" and "survival of the fittest".
> Isn't a fair free market just as much of a pipe dream
> as a "government of angels"?

No, for several reasons. First, which is easier for an
outside person to verify: that two people were treated
the same, or that one person who got special treatment
got exactly the right amount of special treatment and
for exactly the right reason? If the law says only that
the tax rate is 30%, then anybody can verify if all the
companies paid their 30% or not -- or at least it's a lot
harder to hide. But if the law offers a zillion tax
breaks, and worse if the law offers CONDITIONAL tax breaks
that are available at the DISCRETION of lawmakers or
other government flunkies, then who can ever verify
what the right tax rate is for company X, and who can
ever verify if they got all their tax breaks for the
right reasons?

The whole reason politicians want to have lots of
discretion over companies is so they can have a reason
to ask them for money, and the companies will have
a reason to want to please that politician. It is
inherently corrupting.

> > So in sum, I think the well intentioned idea that
> > the government is going to stand up for the little
> > guy is bullshit in practice. The government, any
> > government, has only one thing to bring to the
> > party,
> > and that is force.

> > If that force is used to enforce "sensible
> > regulation"
> > such as (say) child labor laws, product safety and
> > liability standards, truth in labelling laws, and
> > the like, then you and I are on the same side. But
> > when that force is used to enforce so-called "fair
> > trade" rules, and contains a lot of discretion as to
> > who gets what money and what treatment by the law,
> > then
> > it's an invitation to mischief.
>
> What would you do about child labor laws?

I described them as reasonable and said that you
and I are on the same side. I'd keep them.

> > One of my favorite examples of supposed fairness
> > that
> > masks actual mischief is farm price supports. The
> > supposed or claimed benefit is "help for the family
> > farm", which is bad policy anyway. But in reality
> > 90% of the dollars go to big industrial farms owned
> > and run by big-donating corporations. A better
> > policy
> > would be income supports to low-income families, and
> > an even better policy than that would be no support
> > at all, and let the families sell their farms and
> > get
> > other higher-paying work elsewhere.

> The problem is there isn't much higher paying work out
> there for people without advanced college degrees, and
> not everyone is, shall we say "equipped" to get those
> degrees.

Nonsense. Private companies spend more money each year
in worker training than all the public schools in the US
combined. If there really is a big pool of stupid people
who want to work, then the first person to find a way
to tap that pool will make money. That's motivation.

> On the English vs. Spanish debate, I can see your
> point. Believe me, I don't advocate telling people
> they can't speak Spanish, but to be honest, since the
> primary language in the US is English, I don't think
> people should be given the citizenship exam in
> Spanish. If they want to be citizens, they should
> bother to learn the language. That would avoid a lot
> of the problems.

I don't object to that idea.

> Just out of curiosity, when you said you thought
> liberals are all love and no judgement, did you mean
> judgement like judgementalism or like discernment? I
> wasn't sure.

Both. The liberals I know tend to use their emotions
at the expense of their brains.

> Out of curiousity, did you vote for Harry Brown? I
> guess you already figured out who I voted for (Gore!).

=== message truncated ===

Woops! Getting too verbose for Yahoo. My bad.
Yes, I voted for Browne.

Cheers.
-Tom

This is part of a letter I've sent to a self-identified Liberal Democrat
friend of mine. My parts have >> or nothing in front, and
her parts have > in front.
-----
> > Lemme guess, you didn't major in math or economics.
> > Protectionism is a very tempting position because
> > it *feels* plausible. And the case against it relies
> > on some math and a certain faith in economic observations
> > that really aren't very emotionally compelling on
> > their own, and aren't particularly intuitive, IMHO.

> I base my opinions more on history than math. History
> is replete with examples of how, given half a chance,
> the wealthy few will trample all over the impoverished
> many. From African Bushmen (I'm currently reading
> Michener's The Covenant)and Mexican Indians enslaved
> and forced to live and work in mines, to the abuses of
> the industrial revolution (you've read The Jungle,
> right?) economic Darwinism is horribly unfair to those
> born without the intelligence or opportunity to claw
> their way to the top. I see sensible government
> regulation as the only way to have a broadbased middle
> class and a decent standard of living for everyone.

Bwah hah hah. You've swallowed some serious propaganda
along with your history. Yes, the wealthy few will want
to force the weak to remain weak, and will use force to
get and keep an unfair advantage. But what is their
primary instrument of force?

Remember that an actual free market is free from force.
Nobody forces you at gunpoint to go into the McDonald's
and order a Happy Meal.

Contrast that with the infamous "company towns" built
around mining operations, where miners were paid in
company 'scrip' rather than cash, and had to buy food
and rent rooms from the company-owned monopoly sellers.
Anybody who tried to come in and sell groceries at a fair
price, or rent rooms at decent rates, was beaten up by
the company goons.

The company town was many things, but it was no free
market, and the oppressors used force (illegally) to
keep it unfree.

The whole "social Darwinism" thing was horrible
propaganda that tried to find a veneer of scientific
respectability to cover up crushing injustice and
oppression and victimization.

Actual free markets, which I advocate, can only exist
inside a framework of laws, such as property rights,
contract law, and a rock-solid guarantee that every
person is entitled to live free from coercion, force,
and the threat of force.

Do big companies defend free markets? No, almost
never. Big companies tend to look for special treatment
by the government -- so Coke gets millions of taxpayer
dollars every year for "overseas development" and
Archer Daniels Midland gets a half a billion every
year in ethanol subsidies. None of that is free
market stuff. It's corporate welfare.

The way to stop it is to outlaw special treatment.
Then politicians can't sell that special treatment to
the highest bidder.

But as soon as you open the door to special treatment,
subsidies, handouts, assistance, etc., you guarantee
that the bulk of that money will go to the powerful
and the politically well connected.

The only way to allow government handouts and NOT
have them get abused is to have a government of
angels, and as Lincoln said, if we had a government
of angels, we wouldn't need laws.

(Can you tell I ran for Atty General?)

So in sum, I think the well intentioned idea that
the government is going to stand up for the little
guy is bullshit in practice. The government, any
government, has only one thing to bring to the party,
and that is force.

If that force is used to enforce "sensible regulation"
such as (say) child labor laws, product safety and
liability standards, truth in labelling laws, and
the like, then you and I are on the same side. But
when that force is used to enforce so-called "fair
trade" rules, and contains a lot of discretion as to
who gets what money and what treatment by the law, then
it's an invitation to mischief.

One of my favorite examples of supposed fairness that
masks actual mischief is farm price supports. The
supposed or claimed benefit is "help for the family
farm", which is bad policy anyway. But in reality
90% of the dollars go to big industrial farms owned
and run by big-donating corporations. A better policy
would be income supports to low-income families, and
an even better policy than that would be no support
at all, and let the families sell their farms and get
other higher-paying work elsewhere.

The other casualty of farm price supports, of course,
is the consumer, who pays higher prices for food, has
less money left for other things, AND pays taxes to
prop up the prices! And then we have warehouses full
of rotting cheese that the government has purchased
at artificially high prices and can't find a use for.
Stupid, Soviet-style screwing up of the market.

> > Here is something I'm reading on this very subject:
> > http://www.bibliomania.com/2/1/65/112/7036/1.html

> > > And as for border
> > > control, if you've ever been an English speaking
> > > person living in Miami, you'd be hard pressed not to
> > > turn into the world's biggest xenophobe.

> > Why? I thought you liberals were all love and no
> > judgement.

> Live and learn . Do you even know any other
> liberals? I thought we were a dying breed. Actually,
> I was much more liberal on immigration until I spent
> 18 years being repeatedly told that "Esta Miami! Habla
> Espanol!". I am not exaggerating when I say that the
> 56% of the population in Dade County which is Hispanic
> descriminates mercilessly against anyone non-hispanic.
> It is virtually impossible to get a job there if you
> don't speak fluent UNACCENTED Spanish.

> I don't want to misrepresent myself here. I have no
> problem with anyone of any ethnic background, but when
> they come to America they should speak English like
> everyone else has done for 200 years. Where do you
> stand on the English only debate?

I don't want to see the government push anybody around.
So, I wouldn't want a legal REQUIREMENT that anybody
be able to speak English (or any other language).

I also don't want to see the government spend a lot of
taxpayer money supporting multiple languages. If there
is a large (say) Spanish speaking community, let them
raise private funds to pay for translating government
publications.

I would conduct voluntary government business in English,
so your driver's license test would be in English.

I would conduct mandatory government business in the
person's own language (i.e. provide translators to
people charged with crimes).

A One quarter of English are victims of crime -- gotta love this! Shows how various 17 Western countries compare on rates of crime victimization, i.e. how many citizens were victims of various sorts of crime. The USA is in 8th place for Burglary, and isn't even in the Top Ten for Violent Crime (#1 is Australia), for Car Theft (#1 is England and Wales), or Overall Victimization (#1 is Australia).

What do the top crime countries all have in common? Heavy duty gun control.