From The Washington Times:

U.S. households headed by illegal aliens used $26.3 billion in government services during 2002 but paid only $16 billion in taxes, an annual cost to taxpayers of $10 billion, says a report issued yesterday by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).
The report, based on U.S. Census Bureau data, also said if illegal aliens now in the country — estimated at between 8 million and 12 million — received amnesty, paid taxes and used services similar to households headed by legal immigrants, the estimated net deficit would increase from $10 billion to more than $29 billion.
. . .
The report said if the United States is serious about avoiding the fiscal costs of illegal immigration, the “only real option” is to enforce the country’s existing immigration law and reduce the number of illegal aliens in the United States.

I don’t know if these figures are correct or not; let’s assume they are in the ballpark. This means that what we are really doing is providing at least $10 billion dollars in indirect government subsidies to business.
How?
The business community opposes the enforcement of immigration laws because it relies on the continued flow of cheap labor. “Cheap” meaning that the employers don’t pay the aliens a true living wage. So many employees end up drawing public assistance because they don’t earn enough to pay for basic services from their jobs. In other words, the taxpayers foot part of the employer’s true labor costs.
Security issues aside, I guess we can continue to this policy if we want. Just keep remember that when politicians talk about “free markets,” they usually don’t mean truly free markets.

Is no place safe anymore?

In a striking shift in the way the Bush administration has portrayed the science of climate change, a new report to Congress focuses on federal research indicating that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades.
In delivering the report to Congress yesterday, an administration official, Dr. James R Mahoney, said it reflected “the best possible scientific information” on climate change. Previously, President Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of warming as a reason for rejecting binding restrictions on heat-trapping gases.

The “bureaucracy” must be hard at work again. Before you know it they will be coming out with some radical finding on smokestack emissions not being healthy to breathe.

Here’s President Bush’s statement on Monday against the right of private organizations to run political ads:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m denouncing all the stuff being on TV of the 527s. That’s what I’ve said. I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but used for other purposes, as well. I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to, once and for all, get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising. And so I’m disappointed with all those kinds of ads.

A silly statement, really. When he signed McCain-Feingold, Bush knew full well (or he could have if he bothered to ask) that there are loopholes in the regulations But anyway his position on 527s is clear: our decisive leader takes a strong stand against soft money ads on TV.
Fast forward two whole days. Here’s what Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc. wrote in a letter to Senator Kerry:

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.

Huh? A a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings? You mean that suddenly groups of citizens may have First Amendment rights after all? That’s a sudden reversal. One that, at the hands of Kerry, would be labeled a “flip flop.” But since it’s not, this is simply a clarification.
Still, it’s a rapid turn. It wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would it?

A day after President Bush called for an end to campaign spending by independent groups, one such Republican organization said on Tuesday that it had raised $35 million to counter Democratic attacks on television and hoped to wage a $125 million advertising campaign through Election Day.
The organization, the Progress for America Voter Fund, is the first Republican group to announce that it had raised a substantial amount of money to compete with Democratic-leaning groups that have collected tens of millions of dollars to attack the Bush-Cheney campaign on television.

Surely not.

Long-time Bush/Cheney campaign attorney Benjamin Ginsberg resigns due to his link with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Undoubtedly Mr. Ginsberg provided counsel on what each group could and could not legally do–a service not to be confused with “coordination.”
Despite the egg-on-the-face nature of this disclosure, I suspect the folks at Bush/Cheney central are happy with the media coverage this issue continues to generate. Why? Because it continues to focus attention on the campaign system, not the truth.
Since day one the Rove-orchestrated strategy in responding to the swift boat ads is to divert attention away from the ads and place it on the groups sponsoring the ads. Why? Two reasons. First it allows the Swift Boat Veterans to continue to do their “dirty work” circulating unsubstantiated charges against Kerry, while Bush appears to be above it all. “We don’t think anyone should be running such adds” . . . wink, wink. But just as important, it also generate negative media attention to 527s, where the “Democratic” side of the campaign has a huge advantage over Republicans.
So now, instead of discussing whether the swifties are truthful or liars (or worse yet, actual issues affecting Americans), a huge amount of media time has been consumed in a confusing he said/she said discussion of 527s, which is likely to leave the average viewer thinking that:

(1) All 527s must be bad, and
(2) Kerry is benefiting from this dirty political tactic much more than Bush.

Unfortunately, the Kerry campaign has done poor job handling this entire episode. First, it was slow in initally responding to the Swift Boat charges. Presumably, it assumed the news media would serve as a reasonable filter and the ads would go no where. But by now everyone should know that the right wing can turn up the political noise whenever it wants to.
Once it was clear this story did have legs, the Kerry campaign should have focused with laser-like precision on discrediting the charges and those raising them. Instead, it took an indirect approach, apparently thinking it could have the media pressure Bush into quashing the ads. Another miscalculation of the media. The primary reporting 24 hour news provides today is one-side-says-versus-the-other-side-says coverage; the truth is a secondary concern. So within the first couple days it should have been clear that this vague “denounce the smear” tactic wasn’t going to work. Yet team Kerry is still attempting it, and we’ve consequently seen this issue being framed by the Bush campaign for the past week.
This swift boat story has lasted so long that it may now be impossible to kill it with a factual response. I’d rather not see the campaign go this way, but perhaps the only way to put these Vietnam attacks to bed is to fight fire with fire and revive the questions about Bush’s own military record. I’d like to see a campaign based on legitimate issues. But it’s becoming clear that Bush will run an attack-based campaign. And one can sustain only so many punches without swinging back.

Via Juan Cole, this AP article takes us down memory lane and reminds us why Bush I was against invading Iraq in Gulf War I. For instance, here’s what then Secretary of State James Baker said in 1996:

Iraqi soldiers and civilians could be expected to resist an enemy seizure of their own country with a ferocity not previously demonstrated on the battlefield in Kuwait.
Even if Hussein were captured and his regime toppled, U.S. forces would still have been confronted with the specter of a military occupation of indefinite duration to pacify the country and sustain a new government in power.
Removing him from power might well have plunged Iraq into civil war, sucking U.S. forces in to preserve order. Had we elected to march on Baghdad, our forces might still be there.

What was true then is still true today. U.S. troops are going to be a fixture in Iraq for a long, long time.