LTE: Immigration and the Free Market

I had this LTE published in the Newark Star-Ledger today. Usually I've been sending my LTEs to the Trenton Times, because it's local, but the Star-Ledger has a much, much larger ciculation (400,000) so I figured I'd aim at the bigger soapbox.

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Immigrants do not come to America to take jobs from citizens, much less "steal" them. They come here because American employers hate the free market.

In a free market, when there are "jobs Americans won't do" employers would keep raising the pay for those jobs or improving working conditions until they found what those jobs are worth on the open market. In a free market, no one decides what things are worth on his own. It must be done by negotiation between supply and demand.

Instead, American employers think they have a unilateral right to determine what they'll pay for labor, and if the American labor market doesn't agree with them they'll dilute that market with labor from illegal immigrants. "Guest worker" programs just make the dilution official.

Employers are the ones driving illegal immigration, and any solu tion to the problem has to hit them the hardest because they're the ones with the power.

Elizabeth Edwards vs. Dick Cheney

Elizabeth Edwards for President, PLZ:

"I don't know why somebody else's marriage has anything to do with me,'' she said. "I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage.''

The gang at Pandagon wonder if this is the first step in a planned "conversion experience" for her husband. I sure hope so.

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Meanwhile, back at the cesspool:

Will the Washington Post's series on Cheney actually get traction in the MSM? And by "traction", I mean "make them realize you don't have to be a moonbat to want to impeach this guy."

hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is doing a series on the WaPo articles.

These articles should be assigned to management classes as studies in what not to do. They describe the exact sort of decision-making process that reliably leads to disaster, and the kinds of personal dynamics that enable it. It's a model of complete organizational breakdown, and it should be studied for generations to come, so that it is never repeated.

The so-far-unanswered question: Why does Cheney have more power over the President's mind than Condi Rice -- who is *far* closer to Bush personally and politically? Why would she have to let him read her correspondence with her subordinates and make policy changes behind her back, changes that she only found out from the news media?

I'm not saying I necessarily leap to the idea of blackmail, but his power must be coming from *somewhere*.

Karl Rove?