Blog of Q's

By TIM ANNETT, Wall Street Journal Online, April 13, 2006 2:56 p.m.

Economists broadly agree that illegal immigrants put pressure on the paychecks of lower-income U.S. workers with whom they compete for jobs. But the economists differ on the extent of the impact.

Nearly 80% of economists who responded to questions about immigration in the latest WSJ.com forecasting survey said they believe undocumented workers have an impact on the bottom rung of the wage ladder. Twenty percent believe the impact is significant, while 59% characterize the effect as slight. The remaining 22% said there is no impact …

Number of illegal immigrants employed in the United States:
7.2 million

Number of notices of intent to fine employers for knowingly
hiring illegals sent by federal government, fiscal 1999: 417

Number of
notices of intent to fine employers for knowingly hiring illegals sent by
federal government, fiscal 2004: 3

Share of agent investigative
work-years devoted by U.S. immigration authorities to worksite enforcement,
fiscal 1999: 9%

Share of agent investigative work-years devoted by U.S.
immigration authorities to worksite enforcement, fiscal 2004: 4%

“The Administration will…[continue] pressure on the Chinese
government to comply with its subsidy-related obligations under the WTO,
including making a full WTO subsidies notification….”
–Office of the U.S.
Trade Representative, February, 2006

# of years that China has been
obligated to submit to the WTO an annual notification of its subsidy policies:
5

# of such notifications China has submitted to the WTO:
0

current U.S. deadline for Chinese submission of such notifications:
none

from The Australian
Corporate social responsibility is a con job. If we needed reminding
about this absurd craze sweeping the business world, it came a few
weeks ago when AWB boss Andrew Lindberg resigned. His company had paid
$290 million in illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical
regime in Iraq.

Yet, while those illegal bribes were being siphoned off to Iraq under
the UN oil for food program, Lindberg was being hailed by newspapers
hawking the latest Corporate Responsibility Index as one of the
leaders of corporate social responsibility in Australia. Why? Because
talk about corporate social responsibility fell off Lindberg’s lips as
easily as Australian wheat rolled into Iraq, lubricated by AWB bribes.
 
 

By Ronald F. Maxwell, Published April 6, 2006

Dear President Bush,
Perhaps you know me from my work. I wrote and directed the movies “Gettysburg” and “Gods and Generals.” Walking Civil War battlefields, soaking up the letters and diaries of that generation, re-creating the world of our ancestors — all this has given me a deep appreciation for our country …As one of the very few directors of major motion pictures who sees you in a different light, I implore you to listen seriously to what I have to say…Many pundits claim you will be remembered in history as the president who won (or lost) the war in Iraq. I see it differently. I believe you will come to be seen, in the years and decades to come, as the President who saved (or lost) the Southwest of the United States.

… Your immigration policy is viewed as captive to the cheap labor — big business lobby and inimical to the survival of our country…We who understand the vital stakes will not be placated by rhetoric or slogans. The failure to recognize this growing and deep disaffection among Republicans, conservatives, independents and, indeed, many Reagan Democrats, is, in the short run, going to lead to a monumental defeat for your party at the polls in November.

When I watched the Senate Judiciary Committee’s one-day public session on immigration reform … it was remarkable for the near absence of any senator speaking on behalf of the American people or their own constituents. It seems the overriding concern of most senators of both parties is for the illegal immigrant population. … Listening to the self-serving and pandering speeches, you’d think the senators were elected in Mexico or any other country on the globe except America.The Senate has already begun its bloviations and self-agrandizing platitudes, its morality play of good and evil wherein they the noble senators are cast as the redeemers of the entire world population seeking only to “live the American dream.” We know by their coded words they will do nothing meaningful to really solve the problem or to defend America. If their actions of the past 20 years are a guide, they will only take the pose of pretending to do so. As a movie director I can see bad acting a mile away.

Today there are two Republican Parties. One is now seen correctly by most Americans as responsive first and foremost to the demands of multinational corporations, the agro-business and the Chamber of Commerce. The other, best represented by the embattled members of the House, represents grass-roots America — we the people. In this debate you have the opportunity to make the party one and whole again, to regain its soul and return it to the service and the sovereignty of the American people…

William Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden: Why The West’s Efforts To Aid The Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good,
has added his voice to the growing demand for independent evaluation of
foreign aid. … Easterly said … that development
assistance lacks CIAO: Customer feedback, Incentives, Accountability,
and, therefore, good Outcomes. The solution, he said, is independent
evaluation.

“We need independent evaluation of foreign aid. It’s amazing
that we’ve gone a half century without this,” he said. Truly
independent evaluation of aid would “give feedback to see which
interventions are working and give incentives to aid staff to find
things that work,” he said. As a result, aid agencies would “start
specializing much more in individual, monitorable tasks for which they
can be held accountable.”

… Easterly contrasted two approaches. First, an ineffective
planners’ approach that he said lacks the knowledge and motivation to
achieve overambitious, arbitrary targets. Second, what he regards as a
more constructive searchers’ approach: individuals always on the
lookout for piecemeal improvements to poor peoples’ well-being, with a
system to get more aid resources to those who find things that work.

Please see the new globalfund.org, where some of us work. The opinions we express on the blog you’re reading are not necessarily those of the Global Fund.

Besides a completely new design, the
site of the Global Work-Ethic Fund has new content, and some new names: we are
down-playing Work-Ethic. We had
our reasons for this name, and it got some folks’ attention, but … it doesn’t
translate well. So we now highlight: