Eric the Red

Many protests in my area over immigration reform legislation say that illegal migrant workers are the backbone of the US economy. While some say that they ruin our country, others think illegal immigration is related to Mexico re-taking the West. While the Senate would create a legalization path for many of the 11 million migrants in the country, I agree with many members of the House of Representatives.

Lets be real, exploiting such workers has nothing to do with compassion, its about money. A business that employs so-called undocumented workers does not have to pay taxes that fund unemployment insurance funds or workers compensation funds. Such workers bilk social security out of millions upon millions of dollars per year. The same applies to state treasuries and the Federal government, to say nothing of the crime and unemployment that occurs among our own citizens that occurs as a result of our migrant worker population. How many members of MS-13 do you suppose waited in line for a visa? Simple: None of them.

The United States does not need any of these people to function economically. My dad paid for college in the 1970s by working in the areas these workers do: agriculture and construction, and there are plenty of high school graduates to fill these positions.

Legalizing those who have traveled here over the last 15+ years will only open a floodgate in the future. Why wait on a list for years, hoping your priority number for a visa will come up when you can creep across the border and wait for Congress to buckle under political pressure?

So how do we deal with it? Since most of these workers are employed in agriculture and construction, have the INS and local police spot-check construction sites. If they find illegal aliens working there, deport them that week and make the employer pay all the bills as a penalty. The border should be sealed off with a wall and the military and/or national guard should be deployed with the border patrol to ensure its security.

While this will no doubt cause a political uproar in Mexico, so what? Their government has done its part to help millions of their citizens sneak their way in. And whats this crap about our hospitals contributing to those in mexico?? We are on the verge of a crisis over health care costs in this country, and we are sending our money to MEXICO??

Why are we rewarding criminals and cheaters at the expense of our own people?

So its been a long while, hasn’t it? Exams suck…..

I wanted to share a couple of interesting pieces of campus news. First off, the state legislature is consideration to freeze tuition at the University of Maryland. While students widely support this bill, university administrators would prefer to make maryland a more expensive, and therefore better, state university. I wonder if the university will make up for such a freeze by jacking up “mandatory fees”.

Students who live in certain residential facilities are starting to have a rat problem. Apparently, its too tough to operate a trash compactor.

Maryland is going to the NIT (keep monty python comments to yourselves!), so no championships for our “great” basektball team.

Students still show concern over the liberal bias of their professors. As usual, the discussion is mixed. I’ve covered this topic in a earlier post. There is some commentary from Peter Kirstein.

Finally, if you seek treatment for a mental illness (such as depression), your university may label you as a threat and show you the door. IANAL, but I don’t think this is legal under the ADA. GW is in for a royal reaming in court over this one.

I am taking next week off for a much-needed vacation. I may photo-blog from the road.

It seems that paying off ones credit card balance in full raises national security flags. From the article:

“They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn’t move until the threat alert is lifted.”

Lord help us, from those who cost the credit card company money by avoiding interest and finance charges!

In a possibly related bit of fiscal terrorism, the Treasury Department is asking Congress to raise the debt ceiling by a modest $781 billion (with a “B”), to $8.2 trillion (with a “T”) in order to avoid universal default and higher interest rates across on all of their credit cards (known as the taxpayers). What are the finance charges on $8.2 trillion anyway?

Dining services recently proposed a new meal plan that effectively changes the value of $1 to approvimately 398% less than $1. Interesting fuzzy math, ya?

Consider the following:

“The A La Board meal plan introduces a five-level system, with the lowest level costing $1,545 and the highest costing $2,045. Level Two has the most similar cost as the currently most popular “Campus Plan,” at $1,645 a semester. Under the Level Two plan, if students wished to purchase food outside the diners, at the Stamp Student Union food court for example, they would be subject to a 398 percent markup. That is, with a cost of $1,645, you are only able to purchase $415 worth of food at the court. Even under the best-case scenario financially, which involves eating every single meal at the Diner, you would be able to buy $1,221 worth of food, still $46 less than the current Campus Plan provides.”

I am going to look over the “official” numbers myself after a couple of days due to exams and a hectic work schedule.

One of the atrocities this administration has committed against its students is the relentless hike in so-called “mandatory fees”in order to hide the cost of a semester of “education” from the state. Since these fees are assessed seperately from tuition, they school can claim to be affordable. Most of these fees are charged to students who live on campus.

Since the University does not itemize these fees on the tuition bill, the witch knows what they are. A friend of mine who lives on campus paid $585.50 in unspecified “mandatory fees” (on top of $70 to make per-minute phone calls and $42 “tech fee”). His other costs were:

• $1645.50 for the meal plan, which allows a little more than $1,000 to actually spend on food, subject to the University’s takings.
• $3283 for tuition
• $2392 for on-campus housing

Note that I live off campus and use a Terrapin Express account, where I get $1 to spend for every dollar I deposit. Also, the balance rolls over between each year/semester, while the meal plan balance vanishes the day after finals end. If one lives in freshman campus housing, one cannot rely exclusively on Terrapin Express, so the campus meal plan along with its forced budgeting is required.

Now the the Terps basketball season is down the drain, I guess they would like to brag about being the biggest waste of money in higher education? Perhaps I should write a book about my time here: “Mugged by the Terp” to describe my experiences with the exponentially higher costs for an exponentially lower education?

With this being a congressional election year, I decided to brush up on political behavior. Below are the three books I’m reading this spring:

These are:

“Mugged by the State” is especially relevant these days because of Kelo v. City of New London, where the Supreme Court decided that seizing an individuals property for a private real estate developer. It also discusses other outrageous instances where over-reaching regulation is used to squash the economic advancement of mostly low-income families. Not surprising, this is done by mostly left-wing pro-”working man” governments run by Democrats and their ilk. In the wake of Kelo, the city of New London served the displaced residents with rent bills for illegally occupying city property.