Hodgepodge

If the US Immigration and Naturalization Service is considered one of the most inefficient federal agencies, why would our detractors want to build upon a pile of inefficiencies? Isn’t it true that efficiency doesn’t originate in Washington just like innovations in education, information technology and other substantive issues? It boggles the mind why build upon a mountain of inefficiency!

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The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refuses to allow the use of incinerators to clean out the Mount Puerto Rico Dump here. Its reasoning is the discovery that it emits toxic materials that are cancerous, therefore, the effective decision to disallow it. Then there’s a new technology (plasma) that would turn every piece of trash into usable material, including spreading the by-product for road pavement. But guess why this alternative was shot down by EPA: It doesn’t have the study to confirm the safety aspect of this technology. And so the use of plasma is contingent upon how soon Interior’s OIA issues another contract for such study. Is this what’s known in management as efficiency?

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It must really hurt being a blind, if not, stupid advocate of Congressman George Miller’s well shield agenda on perceived labor abuses here. Students blindly say that the federal minimum wage must be made applicable out here. If we were to follow this school of thought singing the Three Blind Mice as a theme, we’d be paying guest workers more than $12 an hour if we add up all the perks that now amounts to something like $6.61 per hour.
The irony in the student demonstration is the decision (right in the heart of San Francisco) of Levi Strauss to head overseas to be able to cut some profit in a marginal industry. Come to think of it, the demonstration should have focused on trying to keep Levi Strauss from leaving North America. It goes to show the level of ignorance among students who blindly allowed their better judgment to be used by the textile labor unions.
If they have taken the time to research the issue (as expected of college students), they would be humiliated to discover that California’s apparel industry has looked the other way on federal minimum wage laws and other labor laws affecting factory workers. With such humiliating discovery, perhaps they should be demonstrating against the union for its grand failure to follow federal laws in the same manner that they’ve preached its application in the NMI.

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If Levi Strauss is headed overseas closing most of its California operations, including the displacement of some 1,500-plus employees, then demonstrating students across the country must buckle down and research the primary reason this giant clothing company is leaving North America. Such relocation is prompted by the cost of labor in the US at $5.15 an hour which totals $41.20 daily versus $8 a day in Mexico. It’s a smart move on the part of Levi Strauss, a dumb move by proponents of more mandated wages that would eventually force other industries to relocate to venues where they can begin writing black ink into their financial statements.

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The economy of the US mainland is a world of difference versus that of an island economy (resource-poor) like the NMI. Therefore, the idea of treating the NMI the same–via federalization–is to ignore the obvious and thus the imposition of a takeover that would permanently deny local governance their rights (as guaranteed under the Covenant) to self-government. The idea of “a world where all people are alike–in wealth or in everything else–is a fantasy for the stupid”. The world would have the same sex gender (no males or females just one of the two), and everybody would live happily ever after, a story that belongs in some fairy tale book, yeah? Think about it!