What should be done about illegal immigration?

Talk to the Academy of Science.

A bedtime story from Johnboy. I like to tell stories, some of which if you can squint a bit, might be relevant to a topic.
Andy, one of my employees, is the singer in a pretty successful Goth band which tours for a month or so each summer using a 15-passenger van. Usually, 8 people plus their gear.
They pride themselves on the fact that, in a couple of 100,000 miles over the last few years, they have never been involved in an accident or gotten a ticket.
BUT...on every tour, they have been pulled over by the police. Usually in the south or SW. The boys in the band, with multi-colored hair in various
states of disarray after performing, stumble out. Andy is good with talking to police. Cooperative, but very insistent that they have no right, I say no right, to search his vehicle unless they go to the trouble of getting a judge to sign off. The guys don't drink, smoke, or do drugs, but Andy, who barely finished high school, is emphatic about that. No warrant = no search.

Andy called me today. They finished show #22 on the 24th day. They packed up and left at 2 am and drove until they got to a rest stop on the Interstate that would take them to the next gig. They got out, the 8 of them, and started to do push ups and sit ups and jumping jacks and some sprint runs.
Someone called the cops. Suspicious activity. The cops and Andy laughed.

I bet there's a book buried there too!

The temptation is to come out of a club and immediately go to sleep in the van. Bad idea. Particularly if the club allowed smoking. Exercise before sleep is their regimen.

Foxfyre - I'm glad to see all this newfound interest in actuarial calculations by persons hitherto unfamiliar with the subject, and before they lose interest I'm posting the true numbers (not to be found on CNN and similarly unprofessional sources). This is the dismal truth link - aka we're facing national bankruptcy and hyperinflation unless we take drastic action now:

http://www.centrists.org/pages/2005/01/social_security_event/dave_walker_presentation.pdf

Francis - please note that considerable work has already been done on the topic by very reputable economists, and the foregoing analysis isn't in doubt.

Now you know why the euro keeps going up against the dollar

High Seas, I question the validity of any forecast going that much into the future; even ten years into the future concerning social security and Medicare are pie in the sky forecasts. It's impossible to know how our economy (and the worlds) will be operating that far ahead. It also assumes there will be no changes to taxes and benefits into the future which I find without much merit.

a) Economic impact (cost vs GDP) on social security and Medicare
b) Adjustments to social security and Medicare taxes
c) Adjustments to age of beneficiaries
d) Number of workers vs beneficiaries
e) Longevity

Thanks, HS. Very didactic presentation.

However, some assumptions left me perplexed if not skeptical..

Your comment about the euro is not rooted in reality. I remember being in the US two years ago when the exchange rate was $1,47 /1€. (Today it's $1.35/1€).

But I take that as joke.

eBrown, lacking any ability to make valid points, or even the intellectual depth to understand the issues, resorts to calling me and others bigots.

What a pitiful moron. He is right up there with O'moron.

LOL

Thats not quite true.
There is such a thing as "plain sight".
That means that if the cops can see something illegal, if its in "plain sight", they have the right to search your vehicle without getting a search warrant.

Also, if there is "probable cause".
That means if the van was swerving, crossing the lines, or otherwise being driven in what the cop thought was a dangerous way, that gives them "probable cause" to search without a warrant.
All they have to do is ask the drivers permission.
Of course, if the driver says no, then the cops can hold the van till they get a warrant.

By operating a vehicle on public roadways, you give consent to a search.

This is not true in any sense of the word true.

ha ha ha ha...

You better check with your states DMV.
Every state that I know of states it is true,just like you automatically consent to a breathalyzer or any other type of alcohol test once you get a drivers license.
To refuse such a test is to forfeit your drivers license.

Your points are duly noted, MM.
A trap that is easy for all of us to fall into is to equate anecdotes to something much broader going on in society at large.
This particular band is clean. Never have any of them been into drugs and the occasional beer in a hotel is just that: occasional.
When they drive late at night from one town to the next, there is a driver and someone riding shotgun. Erratic driving would be noticed.
Again. This band, with the only Republican Gothboy in America as the leader, is an anecdote. But they have been pulled over numerous times.
I suspect they fit someone's profile: big van, out of state plates, late at night.

Several posts crossed. I don't believe that in VA you agree to an immediate search of your vehicle at the whim of a police officer as a condition for getting a license, and, yes, you can refuse to take a breath test.

You misread what I said.
A cop can, with probable cause or using the "plain sight" rule, search your vehicle at any time.
That has nothing to do with GETTING a drivers license.
You have given your implied consent once you actually got the license.

Its the same with alcohol testing (breathalyzer, hair sample, urine test, blood test, etc.)
Its called "implied consent" and you give that once you obtain a drivers license.
Even in VA.

Cicerone Imposter shows he is quickly descending into senility.

Social Security and Medicare "pie in the sky forcasts"????

Note:

MAY 13, 2009 Social Security, Medicare Face Insolvency Sooner

By T.W. FARNAM
WASHINGTON -- The government revised estimates for the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security on Tuesday, moving up the date when trust funds for the entitlement programs will run out of money.

The Medicare fund for hospital care will be depleted in 2017, two years earlier than government actuaries estimated a year ago. Last year marked the first time that Medicare ran a deficit, paying out more in benefits than it generates from taxes and other revenue.

The report also factors in a 21% cut in payments this year, required by law, to doctors working for Medicare. But for the past several years, Congress has canceled that reduction.

The picture for Social Security is better, according to the Medicare and Social Security trustees who issued their annual reports on the two funds Tuesday. The Social Security trust fund wouldn't be exhausted until 2037, but that is four years earlier than last year's report predicted.

The actuaries estimated that Social Security beneficiaries would not receive a cost-of-living increase for the next two years, and that a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries would pay higher-than-usual increases in monthly premiums, 8% in 2010 and 15% in 2011. The trustees are the secretaries of labor, Treasury and health and human services, as well as the commissioner of Social Security.
**************************************************************

Even Cicerone Imposter knows what "government" means. In the first line, "The government revised estimates"--That is Obama's people. Now either they are right and Cicerone Imposter is doing his usual flatuating or they are wrong and prove that Obama's crew are incompetent.

Cicerone Imposter must choose!

I have some questions concerning immigration.

Is it true that more third generation Latinos marry non-Latinos?

If so, are the issue of those marriages classified as Latinos?

Or, are the issue of the marriages of children born to the fifth generation( which may be married to non-Latinos at a similar ratio as the third generation above) considered Latinos?

Why are Latinos considered minorities?

How many Latinos are classified as Black?

Note Wikipedia:

Many Americans who are treated as part of minority groups are included in the census category "white." This is true for many Hispanic Americans, 47.9% of whom identified racially as white. The 2000 Census separated the question on Hispanics from the question on race, the latter being divided into the 5 categories of white, black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Asian American, plus "other", with the respondent having the ability to mark more than one category. It is also true for many Arab and other Middle Eastern Americans and North African Americans, as well as non-European Jewish Americans, since the 2000 Census conflates race and geographic/national origin: white is defined to include people with original origins in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, or Asia.


This means that 47.9% of Hispanics are racially identified as White.

If true, the articles about the USA becoming mainly "minority" in a number of years will only be true if the Hispanic Ethnic group ( 47.9%) are somehow differentiated from the other ETHNICS in the USA.