Hacking is a very new crime. Most Americans had no idea of it before the late 1970s, and even now many may find themselves at a loss to understand the nature of this activity. State governments and the federal government have, however, passed a series of laws dealing with hacking in its many forms, from mere Internet vandalism to cyber-espionage, and modern citizens may want to learn the nature of these laws to understand their effects on their lives.
Laws Against Preparing to Hack
Wisconsin and other states include deceptive or threatening email as a form of hacking, and this practice may be for practical reasons. Given hackers' habit of using social manipulation as a means of penetrating security systems and cyberspies' use of email for the same purpose, hackers are at least liable to use threats or other forms of persuasion to gain footholds into a computer system, and email would be a likely means for a cybercriminal to communicate with intended social targets. Wisconsin's law tries to give law enforcement a means to prosecute any sender of deceptive or threatening email by outlawing such things as simply hiding his identity online.
Intent as a Factor
In the majority of laws against accessing a nongovernmental computer system intended to be secure, the federal government stipulates intent as a necessary precondition to guilt, as reflected on the Cornell Law School website. Making intent a necessary factor for guilt, however, is a two-edged sword. On one hand, doing so leaves a net enthusiast free from prosecution for accidentally entering even the most sensitive databases of any company, but it also leaves the government free to charge hackers assuming a cover from even simply altering their equipment or attempting to enter a secure database.
Cyber-Espionage
The U.S. government claims jurisdiction for a hack targeted at any computer within the U.S., regardless of its country of origin. Given the nature of both hacking and espionage as the dissemination of false information or the illegal acquisition of information, this extension would include the attempts of foreign governments to enter secure American systems. Current laws against cyberspying, however, also include the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, a prohibition against foreign governments specifically gathering information affecting the quality or distribution of their products and services. Even before the development of the Internet, however, the federal government had laws against interfering in its private communications, and some of these may still be applicable to current cybercrime.
Punishment
A first-time hacker, even after a failed attempt to gain information from a protected system, may face a sentence of up to 10 years and a possible fine. Hacking to support other crimes or after a prior conviction can double the penalty, and hacking in aid of an act of domestic terrorism can triple it. In any case of hacking, the hacker will have to forfeit all property used in or derived from the hack, including money and equipment.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
How to Score Above Average on an IQ Test--E-How, 3/28/2011
Raising IQ to a point above average may or may not be a doable task. The person hoping to raise his IQ may, after all, be too far below average for any amount of effort to bring him above an average score. Psychologists studying the rise in global IQ scores over the past fifty years have, however, developed some theories on the cause of this phenomenon, and their ideas may be a means to raise IQ scores to at least some degree.
Eat well and take care of yourself. Neurophysiologist Michelle Braun states that one theory for the rise in global IQ is the effects of better nutrition and care in the modern world, especially in the young. Given this possibility, eating properly and good self-care may have a similar effect on you.
Study. According to both neurophysiologist Michelle Braun and James Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, another reason for the rise in global IQ may be an increase in worldwide education, and so, study itself may prove to boost IQ.
Practice problem-solving skills. Clinical psychologist Mikhail Lyubanski at the University of Illinois in Champagne-Urbana states that 97.7 percent of experts on intelligence defined it as problem-solving ability, and so tests of intelligence are likely to measure that ability to at least some degree. Given this idea, then, increasing your problem-solving skills should also increase your score.
Concentrate on solving visual problems, such as those in a video game. According to Dr. Sandra Azar at Pennsylvania State University, the largest increase in global IQ has been on the Ravens test, a test specifically for such visual intelligence. She concludes, therefore, that visual intelligence may rise more easily than other forms of intelligence. Concentrating on this specific type of intelligence may give you the best results for your efforts.
Practice mental tasks with time limits. Psychologist Christopher Richard Brand says that the current rise in global intelligence scores is due to modern people's greater ability to handle mental tasks in a limited time. According to him, prior generations did not learn to do such tasks within a specified time, and so they scored poorly on IQ tests with time limits. However, later generations, again according to Brand, learned to handle time limits and so scored better. Given this idea, you might be able to raise your IQ score simply by learning to work faster.
Listen to Mozart or Yanni before the test. Researcher Christopher F. Chabris has found that the sound of Mozart's music raises IQ scores. Also, in his overview of research into intelligence, Indiana University researcher Martin Jones found that tests with the music of Yanni had a similar effect, but other forms of music did not.
Eat well and take care of yourself. Neurophysiologist Michelle Braun states that one theory for the rise in global IQ is the effects of better nutrition and care in the modern world, especially in the young. Given this possibility, eating properly and good self-care may have a similar effect on you.
Study. According to both neurophysiologist Michelle Braun and James Flynn, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, another reason for the rise in global IQ may be an increase in worldwide education, and so, study itself may prove to boost IQ.
Practice problem-solving skills. Clinical psychologist Mikhail Lyubanski at the University of Illinois in Champagne-Urbana states that 97.7 percent of experts on intelligence defined it as problem-solving ability, and so tests of intelligence are likely to measure that ability to at least some degree. Given this idea, then, increasing your problem-solving skills should also increase your score.
Concentrate on solving visual problems, such as those in a video game. According to Dr. Sandra Azar at Pennsylvania State University, the largest increase in global IQ has been on the Ravens test, a test specifically for such visual intelligence. She concludes, therefore, that visual intelligence may rise more easily than other forms of intelligence. Concentrating on this specific type of intelligence may give you the best results for your efforts.
Practice mental tasks with time limits. Psychologist Christopher Richard Brand says that the current rise in global intelligence scores is due to modern people's greater ability to handle mental tasks in a limited time. According to him, prior generations did not learn to do such tasks within a specified time, and so they scored poorly on IQ tests with time limits. However, later generations, again according to Brand, learned to handle time limits and so scored better. Given this idea, you might be able to raise your IQ score simply by learning to work faster.
Listen to Mozart or Yanni before the test. Researcher Christopher F. Chabris has found that the sound of Mozart's music raises IQ scores. Also, in his overview of research into intelligence, Indiana University researcher Martin Jones found that tests with the music of Yanni had a similar effect, but other forms of music did not.
How to Reduce Boat Porpoising--E-How, 7/1/2011
Porpoising is the tendency of some boats to flail upward and downward due to the actions of waves. You may find yourself in a porpoising boat, and you will be facing more problems than simply an unpleasant ride. A porpoising boat is harder to steer and has a greater tendency to capsize than one that is not porpoising, and it may therefore place you in need of rescue. Fortunately, however, you can adopt certain measures to at least reduce this problem.
Suggestions:
Lengthen the centerboard, the fin-like extension at the bottom of the boat. The centerboard does present the boat with at least some downward drag, pulling it into the water, and so this force will drag the boat down to the water's surface during a skip, thus shortening the duration of that skip and reducing porpoising. Of course, you may reach certain practical limits to the length of your centerboard. Certainly it cannot extend beyond the distance to the earth beneath your boat, and you can't take into waters as shallow as you could before.
Place a lateral wing upside-down at the bottom of your centerboard. A wing with gas or liquid flowing over both of its upper and lower surfaces pulls itself in the direction lateral to its longer surface, and so the wing will draw your boat further into the water and will do so more strongly with every increase in speed. Though probably more expensive than simply lengthening your centerboard, using a wing can spare you from the problems of lengthening your centerboard and thus may leave you free to continue navigating shallower waters.
Increase the amount of weight in the very bottom of your boat, called the keel, or concentrate the weight present more completely. Sailors normally put such ballast in this location to prevent lateral rolling, but the increased weight will require more lift force to raise the boat out of the water and so will decrease leaps due to uneven water pressure across the hull, such as in meeting a wave. Furthermore, by lowering the boat more completely and evenly into the water, that weight will increase and stabilize water pressure across the hull, thus stabilizing the boat more overall and decreasing the cause of porpoising.
Lengthen the hull of your boat. This will increase the area in contact with the water during porpoising and so will increase the water pressure on it. That pressure will then serve to stabilize the boat.
Narrow the hull of your boat and give it straight sides, as nearly vertical as practical. A boat of a given weight will displace water of a weight equal to itself, and so this design will permit more of your ship's overall height to be below the water line, lowering its center of gravity and stabilizing it.
Suggestions:
Lengthen the centerboard, the fin-like extension at the bottom of the boat. The centerboard does present the boat with at least some downward drag, pulling it into the water, and so this force will drag the boat down to the water's surface during a skip, thus shortening the duration of that skip and reducing porpoising. Of course, you may reach certain practical limits to the length of your centerboard. Certainly it cannot extend beyond the distance to the earth beneath your boat, and you can't take into waters as shallow as you could before.
Place a lateral wing upside-down at the bottom of your centerboard. A wing with gas or liquid flowing over both of its upper and lower surfaces pulls itself in the direction lateral to its longer surface, and so the wing will draw your boat further into the water and will do so more strongly with every increase in speed. Though probably more expensive than simply lengthening your centerboard, using a wing can spare you from the problems of lengthening your centerboard and thus may leave you free to continue navigating shallower waters.
Increase the amount of weight in the very bottom of your boat, called the keel, or concentrate the weight present more completely. Sailors normally put such ballast in this location to prevent lateral rolling, but the increased weight will require more lift force to raise the boat out of the water and so will decrease leaps due to uneven water pressure across the hull, such as in meeting a wave. Furthermore, by lowering the boat more completely and evenly into the water, that weight will increase and stabilize water pressure across the hull, thus stabilizing the boat more overall and decreasing the cause of porpoising.
Lengthen the hull of your boat. This will increase the area in contact with the water during porpoising and so will increase the water pressure on it. That pressure will then serve to stabilize the boat.
Narrow the hull of your boat and give it straight sides, as nearly vertical as practical. A boat of a given weight will displace water of a weight equal to itself, and so this design will permit more of your ship's overall height to be below the water line, lowering its center of gravity and stabilizing it.
1st Place Winner, Wrtiteon's 2010 contest, "How I Spent My Summer."
For many years I’ve listened, through the distance, to the city of New Orleans , and both her cooking and her music, the blues, have spoken to me. This summer, though, I finally met her face-to-face, and I loved our charming and witty conversations.
She was an excellent entertainer, and I loved my fishing and boating trips with her in both the sparkling Gulf and the vast Mississippi . I also had great fun swimming, hiking, snorkeling and water-skiing with her, and of course, on more relaxed evenings, I would step into one of her casinos or simply go bowling.
I was very complementary about her cooking, but her very original dishes earned each bit of praise. No ordinary mind would add savory honey to hot sauce or stimulate coffee with a pinch of pepper, but her originality made each stop at a restaurant or café a revelation of new tastes. Though always excited, I purposefully began eating as slowly as possible to savor each unexpected flavor.
Most of our talk was in the language of music, and for the first time in my life I heard the full variety of her Blues, her Jazz, her Dixieland and her Zydeco music, as well as an entirely new sound, a voice of anger called The Reds. Hearing the bona fide descendents of the founders of her many musical traditions added much texture and feeling to my favorite sounds, and my first encounter with her newest musical expression was an evening of audio adventure. I ended up with no idea of what to expect at any club, music hall or sidewalk stop, and I often sat in the same club till closing in continuous surprise.
After my two-week meeting New Orleans, I can recommend her as a social contact for anyone with the heart and mind to appreciate her. She is one of the most stimulating places on Earth, with many talents, skills and experiences to keep a smile on your face. Drop in on her to see…
She was an excellent entertainer, and I loved my fishing and boating trips with her in both the sparkling Gulf and the vast Mississippi . I also had great fun swimming, hiking, snorkeling and water-skiing with her, and of course, on more relaxed evenings, I would step into one of her casinos or simply go bowling.
I was very complementary about her cooking, but her very original dishes earned each bit of praise. No ordinary mind would add savory honey to hot sauce or stimulate coffee with a pinch of pepper, but her originality made each stop at a restaurant or café a revelation of new tastes. Though always excited, I purposefully began eating as slowly as possible to savor each unexpected flavor.
Most of our talk was in the language of music, and for the first time in my life I heard the full variety of her Blues, her Jazz, her Dixieland and her Zydeco music, as well as an entirely new sound, a voice of anger called The Reds. Hearing the bona fide descendents of the founders of her many musical traditions added much texture and feeling to my favorite sounds, and my first encounter with her newest musical expression was an evening of audio adventure. I ended up with no idea of what to expect at any club, music hall or sidewalk stop, and I often sat in the same club till closing in continuous surprise.
After my two-week meeting New Orleans, I can recommend her as a social contact for anyone with the heart and mind to appreciate her. She is one of the most stimulating places on Earth, with many talents, skills and experiences to keep a smile on your face. Drop in on her to see…
"Are the Republicans Just Kidding Us?" Discuss America, 4/1/11
State legislatures in Idaho, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Florida, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan and Connecticut are all debating bills supposedly meant to limit the rights of teachers and other state and civil workers to bargain collectively. These fury-provoking proposals may, however, be over nothing more than an attempt at political resume-padding by a few Republicans who want to claim to have fought for lower government spending. I've been looking over the text of the Wisconsin version of this measure, and I'm not sure I find any real restriction to either state spending or the collective bargaining rights of state and civil employees.
In spite of the bill's own bragging claim of ending the collective bargaining rights of state workers, I couldn't find a single line in it preventing any union from taking any specific type of action. Admittedly, I could have missed a Declaration of War in the thing; the majority of it is, after all, a long and confusing tract affirming and amending various other laws by identification number. Not having a real means of identifying any of the laws cited or of researching the legal rulings for each, I can only comment on what I understood, but to my very fallible eyes, the bill just seems like a very insecure piece of legislation trying to show off by bragging that it's taking on organized labor. Outside of the thing's own assurance that it intended to end the collective bargaining of teachers, I could find only two sections in it that seem to challenge the rights of workers to participate in unions or the rights of unions to bargain for their membership, and both of them struck me as feeble at best. I also found a few attempts to cut government spending, but I'm pretty sure these measures are fairly weak too.
The bill's supposed "union killer" clause is probably one permitting union members to refrain from paying union dues. The legislators are probably hoping for the teachers simply to stop paying their dues and thus dry the union of funds, but this idea would work only on a union with a fairly short-sighted membership. Workers without long-term prospects with an employer may be less likely to strike and more likely to keep their union payments than entrenched ones, but teachers are very entrenched. First of all, they usually have a limited job market, and so they are very likely to stay at the same school. Furthermore, as they receive pay raises for seniority, each year they have more of a reason to stay in place. In the face of this immobility then, they are at least liable to keep paying union dues out of a fear of losing a greater amount of money than those dues through pay cuts or inventive systems of reimbursement.
Another, probably lesser anti-union measure is one specifying that workers will have to bargain on a year-by-year basis and that if a given set of workers cannot choose a union to represent them in a given year, they will go unionless for that year. The bill does nothing, however, to prevent negotiators from simply reaching a long term agreement without making a formal contract, and the unions would have to be idiots not pursue such agreements. Furthermore, workers under the purview of this clause may choose to keep to their current union simply to avoid being without any, and so the bill may ironically drive them into the arms of the very unions that Sarah Palin has compared to "thugs."
A third, though only possible, anti-union measure in the bill is one permitting the firing of any state employee for three unexcused absences during one or more declared states of emergency. Theoretically, a Governor or Mayor could use this part of the law to declare a state of emergency during a strike by any teachers or other state or civil employees, but at best--and best is not the same as normal!--this measure would only limit workers from staging a walk-out. Unions, however, can have more than one trick up their sleeve. Firstly, they can use their lawyers either to sue the state or to harass it; or they can simply find some new way to bring productivity to a halt. Either things can bring pressure to a city or state without being a strike.
Interestingly, in another of the bill's possible backfires, it also attempts to cut state spending, at least slightly, by cutting the retirement benefits of elected employees. Currently, a retired elected employee in Wisconsin receives a sum of 2% of his or her final average earnings multiplied by the number of his or her years of creditable employment. The bill, however, wants to decrease that percentage to 1.6%, theoretically removing two-fifths of said employees post-office income. This sounds like a real pay-slash for politicians of course, but personally, I don't expect the politicos to accept pay-cuts gladly. They can, after all, raise their own pay, and according to Joe Liebham, Wisconsin State Senator for District 9, they've already done so.
The bill's one other attempt to cut government spending may be roughly as ineffective. The bill mandates the Illinois Department of Human Services to study--merely to study!--ways to increase the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of health care in the state. The words already sound abstract to me, and therefore likely to cause nothing but a long inspection of options, but the bill goes further to promote this possible waste of governmental man-hours by requiring the Department of Human Services to submit any proposals to both the Joint Committee on Finance and the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. In all probability then, this law places control for the passage of health care reforms in the hands of a set of unelected federal bureaucrats with no specific interest in the well-being of the citizens of Wisconsin, and it also gives a de-facto veto to whoever with sufficient influence in the Joint Committee on Finance to prevent a bill from being presented to the legislature.
In light of the bill's seeming ineffectiveness, I have to wonder about its supporters sincerity in the fight to cut federal spending. Are they presenting such bills simply in order to seem like men of their supposedly tea-drinking people? If so, the ruse is amazingly effective. Wisconsin teachers are already offering to cut their own pay in order to keep their possibly unthreatened bargaining rights. Still, to my mind, the proposal's apparent lack of content may betray a very real limitation of the representatives of this newest voting block: the unwillingness and inability of politicians to risk their reputations on making real-world change. They will not risk looking unelectably foolish even for the most necessary cause, and not even a hot new constituency is going to change their dodgy ways. Personally, I can only hope for voters to see that and reject what I perceive as more of the same in brand new clothing.
In spite of the bill's own bragging claim of ending the collective bargaining rights of state workers, I couldn't find a single line in it preventing any union from taking any specific type of action. Admittedly, I could have missed a Declaration of War in the thing; the majority of it is, after all, a long and confusing tract affirming and amending various other laws by identification number. Not having a real means of identifying any of the laws cited or of researching the legal rulings for each, I can only comment on what I understood, but to my very fallible eyes, the bill just seems like a very insecure piece of legislation trying to show off by bragging that it's taking on organized labor. Outside of the thing's own assurance that it intended to end the collective bargaining of teachers, I could find only two sections in it that seem to challenge the rights of workers to participate in unions or the rights of unions to bargain for their membership, and both of them struck me as feeble at best. I also found a few attempts to cut government spending, but I'm pretty sure these measures are fairly weak too.
The bill's supposed "union killer" clause is probably one permitting union members to refrain from paying union dues. The legislators are probably hoping for the teachers simply to stop paying their dues and thus dry the union of funds, but this idea would work only on a union with a fairly short-sighted membership. Workers without long-term prospects with an employer may be less likely to strike and more likely to keep their union payments than entrenched ones, but teachers are very entrenched. First of all, they usually have a limited job market, and so they are very likely to stay at the same school. Furthermore, as they receive pay raises for seniority, each year they have more of a reason to stay in place. In the face of this immobility then, they are at least liable to keep paying union dues out of a fear of losing a greater amount of money than those dues through pay cuts or inventive systems of reimbursement.
Another, probably lesser anti-union measure is one specifying that workers will have to bargain on a year-by-year basis and that if a given set of workers cannot choose a union to represent them in a given year, they will go unionless for that year. The bill does nothing, however, to prevent negotiators from simply reaching a long term agreement without making a formal contract, and the unions would have to be idiots not pursue such agreements. Furthermore, workers under the purview of this clause may choose to keep to their current union simply to avoid being without any, and so the bill may ironically drive them into the arms of the very unions that Sarah Palin has compared to "thugs."
A third, though only possible, anti-union measure in the bill is one permitting the firing of any state employee for three unexcused absences during one or more declared states of emergency. Theoretically, a Governor or Mayor could use this part of the law to declare a state of emergency during a strike by any teachers or other state or civil employees, but at best--and best is not the same as normal!--this measure would only limit workers from staging a walk-out. Unions, however, can have more than one trick up their sleeve. Firstly, they can use their lawyers either to sue the state or to harass it; or they can simply find some new way to bring productivity to a halt. Either things can bring pressure to a city or state without being a strike.
Interestingly, in another of the bill's possible backfires, it also attempts to cut state spending, at least slightly, by cutting the retirement benefits of elected employees. Currently, a retired elected employee in Wisconsin receives a sum of 2% of his or her final average earnings multiplied by the number of his or her years of creditable employment. The bill, however, wants to decrease that percentage to 1.6%, theoretically removing two-fifths of said employees post-office income. This sounds like a real pay-slash for politicians of course, but personally, I don't expect the politicos to accept pay-cuts gladly. They can, after all, raise their own pay, and according to Joe Liebham, Wisconsin State Senator for District 9, they've already done so.
The bill's one other attempt to cut government spending may be roughly as ineffective. The bill mandates the Illinois Department of Human Services to study--merely to study!--ways to increase the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of health care in the state. The words already sound abstract to me, and therefore likely to cause nothing but a long inspection of options, but the bill goes further to promote this possible waste of governmental man-hours by requiring the Department of Human Services to submit any proposals to both the Joint Committee on Finance and the Federal Department of Health and Human Services. In all probability then, this law places control for the passage of health care reforms in the hands of a set of unelected federal bureaucrats with no specific interest in the well-being of the citizens of Wisconsin, and it also gives a de-facto veto to whoever with sufficient influence in the Joint Committee on Finance to prevent a bill from being presented to the legislature.
In light of the bill's seeming ineffectiveness, I have to wonder about its supporters sincerity in the fight to cut federal spending. Are they presenting such bills simply in order to seem like men of their supposedly tea-drinking people? If so, the ruse is amazingly effective. Wisconsin teachers are already offering to cut their own pay in order to keep their possibly unthreatened bargaining rights. Still, to my mind, the proposal's apparent lack of content may betray a very real limitation of the representatives of this newest voting block: the unwillingness and inability of politicians to risk their reputations on making real-world change. They will not risk looking unelectably foolish even for the most necessary cause, and not even a hot new constituency is going to change their dodgy ways. Personally, I can only hope for voters to see that and reject what I perceive as more of the same in brand new clothing.
"Why Arizona's Immigration Laws Won't Work," Discuss America, 4/28/11
I should probably just begin searching for any law even liable to live up to its advertising. Still, in doing so I might end up rejecting any rules other than traffic regulations and The Ten Commandments. Certainly Arizona's recent immigration law isn't going to make the list.
For openers, the thing's most controversial clause merely forbids state and local authorities in Arizona from failing to uphold national guidelines on matters of immigration. Now, according to my high school civics class, federal law already overrides state law, so I'm at a loss to understand the reason for having to repeat that fact. Didn't the police in Arizona already know this? Furthermore, and contrary to the apparent views of the laws supporters, this obligation to heed the feds does nothing in itself to limit illegal immigration; it merely makes the federal government the judge of questions on immigration. In fact, in further proof of this idea, another clause specifically requires state and local police to confirm the legality of immigrants through federal authorities.
Of course, this law might not even mange to keep state and local cops bowing to federal directives. It charges only $1,000 a day to any police department not following federal guidelines, and even as a $365,000 yearly fee, that would still make it an affordable expense for any police department valuing its autonomy or any community benefiting from the cheap labor of illegals. In fact, it's less than 3% of the yearly budget for either the Flagstaff police Department or the small town of Fountain Hills.
Another clause of this law "enables" police to check the immigration status of drivers stopped for a traffic violation, but this alleged empowerment also exists already. After all, after stopping a driver, a cop can legally demand identification and can even take someone in for refusing to present their ID or for presenting a forged one. As illegals are not going to have legitimate IDs, this would, in reality, amount to a check of a driver's immigration status. Apparently though, reality is not enough for the Arizona legislature; they need a law! Oh well, perhaps Arizona's illegals will simply ride public transportation and avoid the whole problem.
A further, even more worthless section of this law permits the police to arrest citizens for stopping their cars to hire illegals and illegals for attempting to accept employment from those citizens--but only if they block traffic! Again: Aren't the police in Arizona already supposed to stop you from doing that? If not, we may want to re-name this law the "Get Those Arizona Cops Off Their Lazy Butts" act. It probably won't accomplish such a worthwhile goal, of course, but it probably will drive employers to seek workers off-road.
The law does approach having some sort of teeth in setting specific prison terms for illegals, but those are, at best, baby teeth. The cost for care and housing of a prisoner, even in minimum security and even after stringent economy measures, can cost an average of over fifty dollars a day or eighteen thousand a year. Therefore, imprisoning illegals could actually be more expensive than just giving them welfare benefits--and quite frankly even the few-year sentences mandated are not going to stop repro-visitors form coming here to set their children free from a their birth country's possible poverty, corruption and crime.
Perhaps the law's one real innovation, however, is in establishing a website for employers to register workers and for law enforcement to check various records on suspected illegals. Like nearly any new law, however, this clause may be open to at least some misuse. The website for registering workers, for instance, does not in fact require immigrant workers to present picture IDs to their employers. Given either a little dishonesty or some competent forgery then, that very registry could just become a clearinghouse for workers with fake identification or no identification at all.
Personally, by the way, I wouldn't really mind if this law were nothing more than a set of repetitions for existing regulations. Heck, I'd even encourage our government to pass just such redundancies rather than adding yet more to the untrackable vastness of law and interpretation currently weighing on us. This bill, however, does have a dark side, a capacity for harm hiding in its willingness to accept anonymous accusation as a reason for investigation and its lack of any stated limit on the number or duration of investigations pursued against any one person or firm. One clause does set penalties for making false reports of the hiring of illegals, but nothing specifically prevents accusers from hiding behind that cloak of anonymity to force the police into prolonged or repeated investigations of a company or person, even after repeated proofs of innocence. Would a business' rivals or a man's enemies use this to harass them or distract them from the profitable use of their time? Possibly...
After reading the text of this ineffective law, I found myself wondering about anyone's real desire to stop illegal immigration in Arizona. For better or worse after all, many businesses there and elsewhere do rely on cheap illegal labor to keep the cost of food and other goods low; and many people just might resent a rise in such a limitless thing as prices more than the loss of a limited amount of their taxes. Of course, the police could shrink the demand for illegal labor by universally enforcing minimum wage laws and thus removing the advantage of hiring illegals, but no one ever seems to suggest that. Perhaps we just want it all--cheap groceries and freedom from the people toiling to pick it. That would certainly explain this law's willingness to drive illegals underground without actually giving police a new means of arresting them.
For openers, the thing's most controversial clause merely forbids state and local authorities in Arizona from failing to uphold national guidelines on matters of immigration. Now, according to my high school civics class, federal law already overrides state law, so I'm at a loss to understand the reason for having to repeat that fact. Didn't the police in Arizona already know this? Furthermore, and contrary to the apparent views of the laws supporters, this obligation to heed the feds does nothing in itself to limit illegal immigration; it merely makes the federal government the judge of questions on immigration. In fact, in further proof of this idea, another clause specifically requires state and local police to confirm the legality of immigrants through federal authorities.
Of course, this law might not even mange to keep state and local cops bowing to federal directives. It charges only $1,000 a day to any police department not following federal guidelines, and even as a $365,000 yearly fee, that would still make it an affordable expense for any police department valuing its autonomy or any community benefiting from the cheap labor of illegals. In fact, it's less than 3% of the yearly budget for either the Flagstaff police Department or the small town of Fountain Hills.
Another clause of this law "enables" police to check the immigration status of drivers stopped for a traffic violation, but this alleged empowerment also exists already. After all, after stopping a driver, a cop can legally demand identification and can even take someone in for refusing to present their ID or for presenting a forged one. As illegals are not going to have legitimate IDs, this would, in reality, amount to a check of a driver's immigration status. Apparently though, reality is not enough for the Arizona legislature; they need a law! Oh well, perhaps Arizona's illegals will simply ride public transportation and avoid the whole problem.
A further, even more worthless section of this law permits the police to arrest citizens for stopping their cars to hire illegals and illegals for attempting to accept employment from those citizens--but only if they block traffic! Again: Aren't the police in Arizona already supposed to stop you from doing that? If not, we may want to re-name this law the "Get Those Arizona Cops Off Their Lazy Butts" act. It probably won't accomplish such a worthwhile goal, of course, but it probably will drive employers to seek workers off-road.
The law does approach having some sort of teeth in setting specific prison terms for illegals, but those are, at best, baby teeth. The cost for care and housing of a prisoner, even in minimum security and even after stringent economy measures, can cost an average of over fifty dollars a day or eighteen thousand a year. Therefore, imprisoning illegals could actually be more expensive than just giving them welfare benefits--and quite frankly even the few-year sentences mandated are not going to stop repro-visitors form coming here to set their children free from a their birth country's possible poverty, corruption and crime.
Perhaps the law's one real innovation, however, is in establishing a website for employers to register workers and for law enforcement to check various records on suspected illegals. Like nearly any new law, however, this clause may be open to at least some misuse. The website for registering workers, for instance, does not in fact require immigrant workers to present picture IDs to their employers. Given either a little dishonesty or some competent forgery then, that very registry could just become a clearinghouse for workers with fake identification or no identification at all.
Personally, by the way, I wouldn't really mind if this law were nothing more than a set of repetitions for existing regulations. Heck, I'd even encourage our government to pass just such redundancies rather than adding yet more to the untrackable vastness of law and interpretation currently weighing on us. This bill, however, does have a dark side, a capacity for harm hiding in its willingness to accept anonymous accusation as a reason for investigation and its lack of any stated limit on the number or duration of investigations pursued against any one person or firm. One clause does set penalties for making false reports of the hiring of illegals, but nothing specifically prevents accusers from hiding behind that cloak of anonymity to force the police into prolonged or repeated investigations of a company or person, even after repeated proofs of innocence. Would a business' rivals or a man's enemies use this to harass them or distract them from the profitable use of their time? Possibly...
After reading the text of this ineffective law, I found myself wondering about anyone's real desire to stop illegal immigration in Arizona. For better or worse after all, many businesses there and elsewhere do rely on cheap illegal labor to keep the cost of food and other goods low; and many people just might resent a rise in such a limitless thing as prices more than the loss of a limited amount of their taxes. Of course, the police could shrink the demand for illegal labor by universally enforcing minimum wage laws and thus removing the advantage of hiring illegals, but no one ever seems to suggest that. Perhaps we just want it all--cheap groceries and freedom from the people toiling to pick it. That would certainly explain this law's willingness to drive illegals underground without actually giving police a new means of arresting them.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Kim Il Jong's very real (but equally unintentional) threat to the world--Yahoo's Third Party and Independents Page, July 9th, 2009
Contrary to popular belief, the bomb has not in fact kept world peace. Fear of the bomb has. Martin Van Creveld, perhaps the thinker in military science these days, makes this very point in his book Technology and War. This idea may strike you as merely a matter of words, but the distinction is important. A world unafraid to nuke its enemies will do so, regardless of the consequences of that deployment. Unfortunately though, by posing even the threat of a smaller nuclear attack, North Korean dictator Kim Il Jong may just be undermining that very fear and may in the process be undermining global stability and North Korea itself.
Kim is indeed posing such a threat, of course. After the failure of the six-nation summit meant to negotiate him out of a full-scale entry into the nuclear club, his intent to fire a missile at Hawaii is clearly meant as a demonstration of at least his ability to nuke the place. Without the possibility of such firepower, his rocket would be nothing more than fireworks, international entertainment, an action without a point. With an implied WMD however, he can force the South Korea, China, Japan and the U.S. back to the bargaining table in hopes of squeezing out foreign aid
He certainly does need this aid. His people might well be dying without it. According to The CIA World Fact Book's entry on North Korea (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/KN.html) "Large-scale international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape widespread starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions." The entry on that page also mentions such specific setbacks as the end of an attempt at a limited privatization of food production and the deleterious effects of recent, widespread flooding on the food supply. Wikipedia's page on North Korea cites her restriction of international trade as hampering economic growth. It probably also prevents them from buying food, making things even worse. North Korea has begun refusing food aid in favor of donations of means to improve their infrastructure (again, CIA World Factbook) but this probably does not lessen that nation's degree of need. It merely shows a refusal of immediate relief.
Unfortunately however, in pressuring for any sort of assistance through a nuclear threat, Kim is probably undermining his own efforts to gain aid. Like many a president before him, Barrack Obama cannot afford to negotiate with terrorists; and, unlike previous terrorists, Kim will not be posing a single, theoretical, resolvable problem, but a continuous one. To bow to such pressure would mean, not a mere instance of apparent weakness, but an ongoing subservience of American interests to a foreign power--an even more dire "proof" of American weakness. In the face of such a threat, Obama, may not even be able to cooperate with Kim in the future, though. After all, even the appearance of a diplomatic victory on Kim's part would have the same consequences internationally as such a victory in real life, and the world community is at least liable to interpret any foreign aid as the result of Kim's attempted nuclear extortion. In the absence of a political rival to Obama willing to negotiate with the North Korean government covertly in order to win a few diplomatic kudos as a peacemaker and a nation-tamer, Kim may in fact be facing a decrease in the U.S.'s willingness to send such aid. Kim is ultimately, then, posing a threat to his own country's interests.
Worse though, just by threatening to stage a nuclear attack, Kim is also raising the probability of a nuclear war, especially against his own country. At least by my reading of Van Creveld he may be. The mere idea of even a single warhead against a target so small as, say, Honolulu, brings the idea of such attack into play in the mind's of both common people and their leaders, and even such simple talk about the possibility of such an attack will also involve at least some acceptance of it, if only as a tragic possibility to be dealt with. Acceptance being the opposite of fear, deterrence will be lower, lessening any nuclear-armed nation's inhibition from deploying atomic weapons on its enemies, especially less powerful ones such as North Korea.
Kim, then, is a danger to the world and to his own nation in particular. I won't pretend to know how to deal with him, though. Diplomacy seems to be getting things nowhere, and military solutions may be futile. A nuclear assault on North Korea may well result in the same effect on deterrence as one from North Korea. A land war may result in the same situation as our country's previous conflict in that land: war with China. Any air strikes would have to be well-aimed enough to take Kim out, and to judge by a similar American action against Libya, we may not be likely to succeed. Assassination just might be an option, but only given both a realistic means to kill Kim and a less warlike successor. Failing to kill Kim would make him a hero, and a second Kim would simply use the threat of an American attack to unify his people in fear....
According to a recent news article, Kim may be grooming his son to be taking over his post after his death. Perhaps this son of a dictator may be a weak enough man to fear his father's plans or a smart enough one to abandon them. For those of us not reading the intelligence reports though, he may be our only hope. Let's hope he is a realistic one--one too realistic to follow in his father's footsteps.
Kim is indeed posing such a threat, of course. After the failure of the six-nation summit meant to negotiate him out of a full-scale entry into the nuclear club, his intent to fire a missile at Hawaii is clearly meant as a demonstration of at least his ability to nuke the place. Without the possibility of such firepower, his rocket would be nothing more than fireworks, international entertainment, an action without a point. With an implied WMD however, he can force the South Korea, China, Japan and the U.S. back to the bargaining table in hopes of squeezing out foreign aid
He certainly does need this aid. His people might well be dying without it. According to The CIA World Fact Book's entry on North Korea (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/KN.html) "Large-scale international food aid deliveries have allowed the people of North Korea to escape widespread starvation since famine threatened in 1995, but the population continues to suffer from prolonged malnutrition and poor living conditions." The entry on that page also mentions such specific setbacks as the end of an attempt at a limited privatization of food production and the deleterious effects of recent, widespread flooding on the food supply. Wikipedia's page on North Korea cites her restriction of international trade as hampering economic growth. It probably also prevents them from buying food, making things even worse. North Korea has begun refusing food aid in favor of donations of means to improve their infrastructure (again, CIA World Factbook) but this probably does not lessen that nation's degree of need. It merely shows a refusal of immediate relief.
Unfortunately however, in pressuring for any sort of assistance through a nuclear threat, Kim is probably undermining his own efforts to gain aid. Like many a president before him, Barrack Obama cannot afford to negotiate with terrorists; and, unlike previous terrorists, Kim will not be posing a single, theoretical, resolvable problem, but a continuous one. To bow to such pressure would mean, not a mere instance of apparent weakness, but an ongoing subservience of American interests to a foreign power--an even more dire "proof" of American weakness. In the face of such a threat, Obama, may not even be able to cooperate with Kim in the future, though. After all, even the appearance of a diplomatic victory on Kim's part would have the same consequences internationally as such a victory in real life, and the world community is at least liable to interpret any foreign aid as the result of Kim's attempted nuclear extortion. In the absence of a political rival to Obama willing to negotiate with the North Korean government covertly in order to win a few diplomatic kudos as a peacemaker and a nation-tamer, Kim may in fact be facing a decrease in the U.S.'s willingness to send such aid. Kim is ultimately, then, posing a threat to his own country's interests.
Worse though, just by threatening to stage a nuclear attack, Kim is also raising the probability of a nuclear war, especially against his own country. At least by my reading of Van Creveld he may be. The mere idea of even a single warhead against a target so small as, say, Honolulu, brings the idea of such attack into play in the mind's of both common people and their leaders, and even such simple talk about the possibility of such an attack will also involve at least some acceptance of it, if only as a tragic possibility to be dealt with. Acceptance being the opposite of fear, deterrence will be lower, lessening any nuclear-armed nation's inhibition from deploying atomic weapons on its enemies, especially less powerful ones such as North Korea.
Kim, then, is a danger to the world and to his own nation in particular. I won't pretend to know how to deal with him, though. Diplomacy seems to be getting things nowhere, and military solutions may be futile. A nuclear assault on North Korea may well result in the same effect on deterrence as one from North Korea. A land war may result in the same situation as our country's previous conflict in that land: war with China. Any air strikes would have to be well-aimed enough to take Kim out, and to judge by a similar American action against Libya, we may not be likely to succeed. Assassination just might be an option, but only given both a realistic means to kill Kim and a less warlike successor. Failing to kill Kim would make him a hero, and a second Kim would simply use the threat of an American attack to unify his people in fear....
According to a recent news article, Kim may be grooming his son to be taking over his post after his death. Perhaps this son of a dictator may be a weak enough man to fear his father's plans or a smart enough one to abandon them. For those of us not reading the intelligence reports though, he may be our only hope. Let's hope he is a realistic one--one too realistic to follow in his father's footsteps.
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