Free Republic

A current commercial campaign for Geico insurance depicts modern-day cavemen who get offended when people assume they're uneducated. A similar theme could hold true when it comes to illegal aliens, according to a new study. Contrary to the stereotype of undocumented migrants as single males with very little education who perform manual labor in agriculture or construction, the Pew Hispanic Center report shows that most of the illegal population lives in families, a quarter has at least some college education and that illegal workers can be found in many sectors of the U.S. economy. "Not all of the unauthorized population...

Employees of United Airlines recently got a frightening lesson in the “ownership society.” The lesson was: If you don’t own and control your retirement assets, they can be slashed or taken away at any time. A federal bankruptcy judge approved United’s request to dump its pension plan into the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., a federal agency that takes over insolvent retirement plans. More than 120,000 United employees and former employees — including many who are already retired — will see major cuts in their retirement benefits. For decades, United has promised its workers generous payments in retirement. As other industries...

BRASILIA, Brazil - Brazil's ruling party was shaken Monday by accusations that it bribed lawmakers to maintain its coalition in Congress, raising fears of a scandal that could paralyze President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government as it seeks to pass key reforms. In response to the allegations, investors sent stocks falling that 4 percent before recovering slightly to close down 3 percent. Brazil's currency initially fell more than 2 percent against the U.S. dollar and ended the day down 1 percent. Congressman Roberto Jefferson told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper that he first told top Silva advisers about...

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi yesterday urged insurers to cut their workers' compensation rates by 18 percent July 1 to reflect the savings they have received from recent regulatory reforms. An insurance industry spokeswoman responded that double-digit reductions are likely, although not necessarily as deep as those Garamendi recommends. "Eighteen percent is not unreasonable," said Nicole Mahrt, public affairs director for the Western Region American Insurance Association. "It's higher than what some companies are able to do, but some companies are already planning cuts higher than that." Twice a year – on Jan. 1 and July 1 – the state...

Social Security's Sham Guarantee by Michael D. Tanner May 29, 2005 Michael Tanner is director of the Cato Institute's Project on Social Security Choice. How many times during the recent debate over Social Security reform have you heard someone refer to Social Security's "guaranteed benefit"? The AARP says "Social Security is the guaranteed part of your retirement plan." Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, touts the system's "guaranteed retirement benefit." The liberal activist group ProtectYourCheck.org, headed by former Clinton chief of staff Harold Ickes, is running ads calling Social Security "a guarantee you earned." But Social Security benefits...

Where is Reverend Al Sharpton's apology? "Black leader" and former presidential candidate Al Sharpton recently capped off a busy week by demanding apologies from Mexican President Vicente Fox and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. Fox, in defending Mexican illegals working in America, said such workers take jobs that "even blacks" refuse to do. Enter Sharpton. He demanded an apology, arguing Fox's words "confirm the stereotype that blacks are the lowest peons in the workforce of this country." Although Fox promptly "clarified" his remarks and told Sharpton that he "regretted any hurt feelings," Sharpton remains unappeased. "If I step on...

As amazing as it might seem in the midst of the current Social Security debate, the first reforms to our national retirement program were actually initiated by its founder, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, less than three years after he signed it into law, and, oddly, before it paid out any benefits. In fact, an April 28, 1938 letter from FDR to then Social Security Board Chairman Arthur Altmeyer suggests that Roosevelt’s original proposal in 1935 was largely what marketing and sales organizations today would refer to as a “bait and switch”: “I am very anxious that in the press of administrative...

Hispanic workers accounted for more than 1 million of the 2.5 million new jobs created by the U.S. economy in 2004. But Hispanics are the only major group of workers to have suffered a two-year decline in wages and they now earn 5 percent less than two years ago, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Despite strong demand for immigrant workers, their growing supply and concentration in certain occupations suggests that the newest arrivals are competing with each other in the labor market to their own...

Urges Lawmaker to Allow All Americans to Build Retirement Nest Eggs With Personal Accounts As the U.S. Senate Finance Committee met today for a hearing about Social Security reform, the free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity named one of the committee's members, Sen. John F. Kerry, its inaugural "Investor of the Week" for his outstanding personal investment record and secure retirement future. The group also urged Sen. Kerry to back legislation creating personal accounts in Social Security, which would allow all Americans to build larger retirement nest eggs by investing some of their Social Security tax dollars in safe bond...

Democrats have good reason to be aghast at President Bush's new proposal for Social Security. Someone has finally called their bluff. They tried yesterday to portray him as just another cruel, rich Republican for suggesting any cuts in future benefits, but that's not what the prime-time audience saw on Thursday night. By proposing to shore up the system while protecting low-income workers, Mr. Bush raised a supremely awkward question for Democrats: which party really cares about the poor? For decades Democrats have pointed to Social Security as a triumph of communal generosity, proof that Americans (or at least non-Republican Americans)...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Thousands of illegal immigrants have obtained driver's licenses in three states, federal authorities said Thursday, highlighting a security hole that the Sept. 11 hijackers exploited. Three employees of Florida's motor vehicles agency were among 52 people arrested in a bribery scam that put driver's licenses in the hands of at least 2,000 illegal immigrants, officials said. The case, announced Thursday, follows similar arrests in Michigan and Maryland over the past week. "With a valid driver's license, you establish an identity," said Michael Garcia, assistant secretary of the Homeland Security Department. "There's no way to identify whether that...

This is an excellent website created a couple weeks ago by Dick McDonald, a retired CPA, to explain the pros and cons of the "old social security" and the proposed privatized "new social security. Get the word out - it needs to be linked to other websites whenever possible. He's gone to a lots and lots of work to explain just about every question people have about this. http://www.thenewsocialsecurity.com/ The "Copy and Paste" feature is blocked on Dick's new website for copyright protection, but I would strongly recommend that you visit this interesting new informational site which outlines the truth...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - A year ago, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed sweeping changes in the state's workers' compensation system, he promised the legislation would protect workers, save billions of dollars and root out fraud and waste. On Tuesday, unions and other groups representing injured workers will mark the first anniversary of those changes with rallies at the Capitol and Schwarzenegger's Los Angeles office. They'll be protesting, not celebrating. The changes, they say, have made things worse for employees who suffer job-related injuries, particularly in the way the administration has been implementing the new law. "The biggest issue we are going...

Assimilation, once the goal of every American immigrant, need not be a thing of the past. Our national motto, E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One), was the brainchild of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin in 1776 to complement the unity of colonies into a nation, later the United States of America. E Pluribus Unum still appears on every US coin. Once upon a time, the national motto was also appropriate for America’s immigration policy. We even referred to America as the ‘Great Melting Pot.’ From many immigrants, came many American citizens. That was then, this in now. Not...

Onslaught of globalisation, outsourcing and rising competitiveness of countries like India, besides the American worker pricing himself out of the market with huge pay cheques, health insurance and other benefits, has led to a situation where US companies have virtually zilch for employees wage increases. These are the major reasons given by economists to explain why employees, across the spectrum of activities in US economy, are increasingly facing a situation where their companies are left with less money for raises. If not a wage freeze, figures being bandied about are as low as 2% wage increases! The fear amongst most...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - More than half of a small military contractor's 167 employees are illegal immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. Eighteen men were arrested, all but one of them Mexican. An audit of hiring records showed 86 employees of Naval Coating Inc. don't have permission to work in the United States, the department said. The company paints ships at Naval Station San Diego. Most of its employees have security badges to enter the base that is home to more than 50 ships. Agents confiscated eight fake Social Security cards and six phony alien registration cards during...

Some organized labor groups recently decided that the retirement security of their members was less important than their own short-term political goals. The AFL-CIO and some of its member unions declared that investment managers for their retirement funds should be chosen based on their position on Social Security reform, not on what is best for current and future retirees. Labor is signaling that it would rather employ a bad fund manager (if he agrees with it politically) than a good funds manager (if he does not). If this happens, it’ll be union members and retirees who lose, not the AFL-CIO...

MEXICO CITY (AP) - More than a dozen legal Mexican and Central American migrant workers recruited by U.S. companies filed a complaint Wednesday alleging they were abused and denied rights guaranteed by the North American Free Trade Agreement. The complaint, filed with the Mexican government under the companion labor agreement to NAFTA, maintains that 16 migrant non-farm workers from Mexico, Guatemala and Panama suffered labor abuses in the United States but had no way to file a complaint or to access U.S. courts. Lodged with the help of eight American and Mexican labor and migrant organizations, the complaint calls on...

Today there was a protest in San Francisco by some 'immigrant' Chinese workers who are mad that their jobs possibly got 'outsourced' to China. Ironic, isn't it? While the AP article lists the folks as from Chinese descent, it does not however say whether or not these people are in this country legally (in other words these workers probably are not in this country legally). The company that these folks worked for is accused of laying them off without severace or proper notice, something that is required under California law. I am not sure of whether or not the company...

"If we were not so used to it, we would find it odd for the government to collect money from young workers and give it to the old (mostly workers' parents)." -- Robert Barro The headline that Business Week put on Robert Barro's column quoted above was "Why Private Accounts are Bad Public Policy." And the headline that the Washington Post put on a story that referred to Barro and others was Conservatives Splitting on Social Security. Is that the real story? I would describe Social Security as a program with a dubious economic rationale and very large costs. As...