But we don’t need to default. When we reach the debt limit President Obama could thumb his nose at Congress and just keep spending the money to pay the country’s obligations, like Government bonds, Social Security and Medicare payments, subsidies for school lunches, and all that stuff.

President Obama could ignore the debt ceiling and keep spending, because the legislation that imposes the limit is… well, unconstitutional. Section 4 of the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

That means we can’t question whether any debt legally incurred by the government is valid (must be paid). It must be paid, and that’s all there is to it. But establishing a debt ceiling casts doubt on whether existing debt will be paid, because the government borrows money to pay its debts: bonds, Social Security and so on. It means that the debt ceiling law is unconstitutional, and the President can ignore it.

That’s not just my opinion. It’s the opinion of several noted Constitutional lawyers, Congressmen, and other Serious People. The option has been raised to President Obama himself at a news conference, and he did not rule it out. It could happen, and while I hope it’s not necessary, it’s a lot better than defaulting.

Raising the debt ceiling (or ignoring it) would give the politicians a chance to get off their ideological high horses, negotiate a budget in good faith, and get the country moving toward financial stability. Will they take the chance? That’s up to you. Write and tell them what you think.

Most people agree: the deficit is too big. We have to do something about it, and the politicians are making loud noises about how to fix it. They have politicized the discussion beyond all belief, which guarantees that any “solution” they come up with will be a disaster.

The sad fact is that solving the deficit problem is going to require sacrifices from all of us: we’re all in the same boat; it’s sinking, and we must all help to bail.

Sensible, precisely directed spending cuts will help reduce the deficit, but they won’t eliminate it, nor will they achieve objectives like repairing crumbling infrastructure, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, or adding the huge numbers of jobs we need to get the economy back on its feet. Draconian cuts to needed programs won’t help either: in the long run they’ll destroy our economy and our people.

Well if you can’t solve the problem by cutting government spending, how can you solve it?

By increasing government revenue.

One approach we ought to take is to eliminate tax loopholes. The tax code could be vastly simplified to ensure that every individual, household, and corporate entity pays a fair share. Some deductions ought to remain, because they encourage behavior we want to encourage. Charitable giving is an example. Others, like the mortgage interest deduction might be phased out over the next several decades, but slowly, because the mortgage interest deduction is a huge factor in many families’ financial security.

Another approach is to increase the tax rates. Doing so would have an immediate effect, yet could be designed make the comfortable and wealthy contribute more, while minimizing the sacrifices made by those who can least afford to sacrifice. Some of you will recoil in horror: “Redistribution of wealth!” you will scream. Perhaps, but we need to increase revenue to reduce the deficit, and some of us can well afford to provide more revenue, while others cannot.

Who? Let’s take a look at how wealth and income are distributed and at how we are taxed.

Economists define wealth as being equivalent to net worth. A person’s wealth is the sum of the values of his or her marketable assets (like real estate, stocks, and bonds) less the value of his or her debts (like mortgages, and credit cards).

2007 is the latest year for which good numbers are available. In a paper titled Wealth, Income, and Power, Professor G. William Domhoff of the USC Santa Cruz Sociology department says that in 2007 the top 1% owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. Remember the 80-20 rule? Well the wealthiest 20% owned 85% of the wealth, leaving only 15% for the bottom 80%! (The amount of wealth held by the top 20% is shown by the red and green areas of the chart combined.)

If that comes as a shock, don’t feel lonesome: a 2010 study showed that most Americans, regardless of income level, gender, or political affiliation, have no idea what the distribution of wealth is. If you’re ready for another shock economist Edward Wolff estimates that since 2007 there has been a 36.1% drop in the wealth of the median (middle of the middle class) household, while the wealth of the top 1% dropped only 11.1%

Wealth and income are two different things: income is money earned from work (wages and salaries) and from wealth (dividends, interest, rents, and royalties).

Looking at income gets us to the question I was asked at Rotary: “How much money does the top 2% make?” The answer is…I dunno. But I do know this: in 2009 the top 5% averaged $295,388 in income. In 2007 it was $287,191.

In the table below, the top 5% is included in the top 20%. That is, in 1983, the 20% with the highest incomes earned 45.1 percent of the aggregate income and the rest of us earned 54.9%. (Also note that we’ve added a year not included in the wealth chart.)

Income distribution is important because income taxes are the biggest source of government revenue. Our Federal Income Tax system (like most) is progressive, meaning that the richer you are the higher your tax rate. The theory is that the richer you are, the more of your income you can afford to pay in taxes. The chart below shows how much people paid in taxes (Federal, state, and local) as a percent of their income. Our system, when you count all taxes, is mildly progressive—until you get to the top 10%, where it flattens out. Then it becomes regressive: the top 1% (who held about a third of the wealth) paid a smaller percentage of their income.

They paid less because, as you can see from the blue areas on the chart, state and local taxes are regressive, meaning that the poorer you are the more of your income goes to these taxes. The problem is that the less income you have the more of it you need.

The chart below is another way to look at how income—and tax liability—are distributed. The lowest 20% earned about 3.5% of the aggregate income in 2010, and paid about 2% of the taxes. The fourth 20% earned 19% of the income and paid 19% of the taxes. Only the top 20% paid a larger share of taxes than their share of income, with the top 1% earning 20.3% of the aggregate, and paying 21.5% of the taxes.

I’ve been told, by my conservative friends, that 47% of the population doesn’t pay any taxes. Well that’s a great number to feel outraged about, but it’s not quite true. According to Congress.org, the number came from a study done by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The study does estimate that 47% of U.S. Households did not pay any Federal Income Tax in 2009. 85% of them, however, paid payroll and Medicare taxes, and of the 6% who did not, most are elderly or very poor. Fair enough: they can’t afford to both pay taxes and eat, so let them eat. Over the years, the Congress has consistently ensured that the poorest Americans don’t have to pay taxes.

In a “normal” situation, that is when we don’t have huge deficits, the effects of our tax policy are reasonably fair, except for the regressive State and local taxes. I think the tax code ought to be simplified drastically, and many loopholes, subsidies, and entitlements eliminated. But the simplification needs to be done carefully, so that our tax system continues to encourage socially useful behavior and doesn’t impose an unfair burden on those who are already suffering. And we should change the tax rates appropriately. What is appropriate? Let’s look at some history.

The first Federal income tax was imposed during the Civil War, but was repealed afterwards. The current system was enacted in 1913, and the chart that follows shows how the top tax rate has changed over the years.

The table will make more sense if we add some historical events:

Between 1914 and 1918 the top tax rate shot up to nearly 80% to pay for World War I. After the war the rate came down, but in 1929 the stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. The top tax rate started going up again to pay for President Hoover’s attempts to improve the economy, and then for President FDR’s New Deal. Then, between 1941 and 1945, the top rate soared to over 90% to pay for World War II.

It stayed up there until 1968, paying off the war debt, and paying for the Marshall Plan and other forms of foreign aid. But (believe it or not) dropped during the Viet Nam War! It has continued to decline since then even though we spent huge amounts of money fighting the Persian Gulf War, beefing up internal security after the 9/11 attacks, and fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There’s a pattern here: raise taxes to pay for wars and economic disasters. That technique worked for 60 years after the income tax started. Then we got the idea that we could pay these extraordinarily large expenses without extra revenue and our top tax rate is lower than it has been since 1928! We also have a deficit so big it’s incomprehensible, and an economy that totters along like a drunk navigating between curb and gutter.

We’re not going to get out of this situation by cutting spending, even if we use a dull axe and turn the whole middle class into a lower class. That strategy would turn us into a Third World country and probably a wholly-owned subsidiary of the People’s Republic of China.

We need to raise taxes. How much? I don’t know, but it’s clear that our government needs a lot more revenue to do what it needs to do. The lower income people among us are teetering on the edge of total financial disaster, and much of the middle class is close to disaster as well. We need to continue the programs that are keeping those people going, and we need to require that those who can afford to pay do so. We must make our Federal Income Tax system fiercely progressive and a whole lot simpler.

The boat is going down, and we’re all going to sink together, so pay up or start swimming.

Many of those who voted against the bill are also opposed to the Democratic plan to let the tax cuts for the very wealthy expire, while keeping the tax cuts for the middle class. That plan would provide $700 billion in revenue that could be used for aid to states, tax credits for job creation—and unemployment compensation. Everybody, including the very wealthy, would still get a tax break, because the first $250,000 of income would be taxed at the lower rate.

By the way, the argument that letting the tax cuts for the very wealthy expire would hurt small businesses is complete and utter nonsense. Less than 2% of small businesses would be subject to the tax increase. More than 98% would continue to get the middle class tax break we now enjoy.

Also nonsense is the argument that ending the tax cuts for the very wealthy would slow economic growth. Tax cuts lower government revenue and raise government debt; higher government debt leads to higher interest rates, which restrain growth.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the Bush tax cuts would have little effect on the economy, increasing the GDP by only 10 – 40 cents per dollar. The very rich don’t spend as much of their income as lower income people do, so extending the Bush tax cuts only for the wealthiest 2% would be even less stimulative than extending all of the tax cuts. The CBO said that extending tax cuts would have the least value of the eleven economic stimulus policies it studied. A combination of direct aid to states, tax credits for job creation, and extended unemployment compensation would have three times the effect of extending the Bush tax cuts. Extending unemployment compensation alone would add as many as 600,000 jobs and boost economic output by as much as $1.90 per budget dollar. That’s because people will spend the money right away. For necessities. And for Christmas.

Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats who claim to be deficit hawks say we can’t afford to spend $33 billion to help the unemployed, even though it would add hundreds of thousands of jobs and put nearly $2 per budget dollar into our struggling economy. Nor do they want the government to have the $700 billion in extra revenue that would result from ending the Bush tax cuts for the very rich, even though the revenue could be used reduce the deficit or stimulate the economy.

Please write your elected representatives and tell them you want unemployment compensation extended. And tell them you want to let the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthy expire. That will help the economy and reduce the deficit. Pretty good deal, huh?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Unprecedented Republican sweep.” OK. Democrats, Progressives, and Liberals lost. The Republicans gained control of the House, and made gains in the Senate.

Why? Let’s look at some numbers. Republican leaders, who surely read the exit polls, say the message is clear: “Repeal healthcare reform!” But according to those exit polls, only 18% say healthcare reform is the top issue. 48% want to repeal it. 47% said keep or expand healthcare. Doesn’t sound like a mandate to me.

House Minority Leader (and presumptive Speaker) John Boehner says the “loud message” from the voters is “Cut spending!” Well, 39% say that cutting the deficit should be Congress’ top priority—but 37% say the government should spend more, to create jobs. 39% to 37%: another non-mandate.

It’s interesting to note that most of the voters in this election cycle were older, blue-collar white men from the South and Midwest. Those areas are not the twinkling stars of our economy, folks, and those voters are suffering.

“It’s the economy, Stupid!” Some voters wrongly blamed the Obama administration for the sullen economy, but more of them blamed Bush II, and even more blamed Wall Street. The last two groups had it right: the economy was sliding into the tank when Obama took office; the TARP package was started under Bush but passed under Obama. (After they helped pass it the Republicans repudiated it.) The Obama administration successfully bailed out the U.S. auto industry (American made cars are selling better than foreign cars and the automakers are healthy again), and bailed out the financial sector as well. (We, the taxpayers are making a profit on the bailouts, by the way.) The Obama administration passed financial regulation and consumer-friendly credit card laws that will help prevent problems in the future. And they did it over the anguished screams of Republicans—and constant Republican obstructionism.

The avalanche of money from the big-money crowd both at home and abroad is another reason the Democrats lost so many seats, but I’ve already commented on that and will do so again elsewhere. In the main it was the poor economy that bashed the Democrats, even though it’s not their fault.

But the Democrats could have done a lot better on November 2. They simply did not get their message across to the voters, or motivate the voters to go to the polls. During the first two years of his administration President Obama should have exercised the charismatic leadership that got him the job. He, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi should have imposed better discipline on the Democrats in the Congress, should have been less anxious to be “bipartisan,” and should have used the bully pulpit to counter Republican arguments.

What’s going to happen in the next two years? I had lunch yesterday with a friend who had the most likely answer I’ve heard: nothing. Nothing will happen. The House will pass legislation that nobody really likes, after endless hours of wrangling, and between endless hours of hearings and endless investigations of Democrats that will turn up virtually nothing. The Senate will sit on any legislation the House manages to pass. If the Congress actually passes something on the Republican agenda (like the repeal of healthcare reform or the privatization of Social Security) Obama will veto it.

Doing nothing puts us on the road to disaster. If you don’t go forward you will go backward. It’s a law of nature as immutable as the law of gravity. The Democrats—from Obama on down—must get their act together. Get your agenda straight, Democrats! Negotiate among yourselves, but come to an agreement—and stick to it! Work together. Don’t bother to try to work with the Republicans: they’ve said time and time again that they won’t compromise. You still have power, Democrats. Use it.

Or the United States of America will end up being a Third World country.

Problem #1 is the recent Supreme Court decision that allows corporations (or anybody) to make unlimited donations to political campaigns.  Corporations don’t have the same agendas that ordinary people do.  Corporations exist to make a profit.  If they think they can maximize profits by clobbering the environment; taking short-sighted and  dangerous financial risks; screwing up the economy; screwing the customer; and driving the rest of us into the poorhouse—they will do it.  They do not want to be regulated because regulation prevents them from doing things that may benefit them but are bad for society.

The idea of a “free market” is fine: competition lowers prices and improves quality and variety. But an unregulated market is a war, and guess who gets clobbered by collateral damage.

(You and I don’t want to be regulated either, but we recognize that laws are necessary. The alternative is the Law of the Jungle, which is the ordinary citizen’s version of the free market.)

Corporations are, in the legal fiction, persons. They have most of the rights of citizenship—but few of the responsibilities.  That worked in the past, but it’s not valid any more.  Corporations’ freedom of speech, like their freedom of action, should be limited.  They should not be allowed to lobby Congress or contribute more than a token amount to political campaigns—because they are very powerful, and their interests conflict with the interests of society. I believe that the nation ought to belong (as our founders said) to the people.  I believe corporations ought to be strongly regulated to prevent them from screwing up the economy, the environment—and the rest of us.

Problem #2 derives from Problem #1.  PACs are spending obscene amounts of money to influence our elections. As a reader commented after my previous post, enter “600,000 in pac” (without the quotes) in any search engine and look at the results. You should be horrified.

Worse, the United States Chamber of Commerce is actively soliciting donations from foreign corporations, some of which are owned by their governments, as well as domestic corporations.  The money is not, it’s true, earmarked for political purposes; quite the reverse, in fact.  But a dollar is a dollar:  money contributed by foreign corporations and earmarked for nonpolitical purposes enables the chamber to spend equivalent amounts for political purposes.  Effectively, that foreign money is interfering in our internal affairs.  That’s a completely unacceptable situation, and a very scary one, because foreign corporations and governments are not part of this country; they have interests that conflict with our national interest as well as with our personal interests.

It doesn’t matter whether the huge corporate donations go to PACs that support Republicans or Democrats.  It doesn’t matter whether the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to support the Republicans or the Democrats.  It doesn’t matter who benefits: It is wrong, it is frightening, and it ought to be illegal because it is terribly dangerous to our country and to our form of government.

Their leader pulls out the ballot for your district. He gently but firmly shows you where to put the check marks. “It’s for your own good,” he says. He tells you his candidates will reduce the deficit by eliminating wasteful programs like Medicare. He says they’ll repeal healthcare reform—but doesn’t mention that the legislation they’d repeal makes it unlawful to deny you insurance because you have a preexisting condition, mandates that the insurer can’t cancel your policy when you get sick, and allows your kids to stay on your policy until they’re 26. He says his candidates will repeal financial regulatory legislation to restore the free market, but he doesn’t tell you that the legislation they’d repeal makes credit card processors treat card holders more fairly and restrains excessive risk-taking by financial institutions. He tells you a lot of things that sound good, but doesn’t tell you they’re trying to take us back to the policies that ruined our economy and made the very rich very much richer—at the expense of the middle class.

He’s not your friend; that smile is really a smirk, because your whole house would fit in his living room.

The Democratic candidates, he says, are terrible people who just want to spend your money on wasteful government programs. Like Social Security. Food safety. Veterans benefits. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Elect our candidates and everything will be just fine.” Yeah. If you make over $250,000 a year.

Is this just a scary fantasy? No. The United States Chamber of Commerce, financed by secret U.S. and foreign donors, has launched a $75 million campaign to attack Democratic candidates. Many of the donors are large corporations like Prudential Financial, Dow Chemical, Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon (a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands), and the parent company of the famously “fair and balanced” Fox News. Others are foreign corporations. They come from from China, India, and the Middle East, and some are owned by foreign governments. They are certainly not your friends.

Large corporations aren’t your friends because their charter is to make money for their stockholders, and, incidentally, for their top executives. They don’t care about you; they care only about their bottom lines. And they’re too short-sighted to see that by running our country into the ground they are destroying themselves in the long run. In the meantime, they’re spreading misery for the middle class.

Foreign governments are not in the least bit interested in the American middle class, or the American national interest. China wants what benefits China. India wants what benefits India. Dubai wants what benefits Dubai.

That’s very scary, and it’s no fantasy. The big money interests here and abroad are trying to buy this election, and they have the money to do it! This is the most serious threat to our democracy in the 234 years it has existed. They want to run our country in their interest, not ours. Don’t let them get away with it. For the very life of our country…vote Democratic!

With blatant insincerity, the proposal says that the FCC should indeed regulate the internet–but only in specific ways. It proposes that internet service providers (like Verizon) should not be allowed to block access to information providers, or offer a paid “fast lane.” It says that the FCC ought to have the power to prevent or stop such violations.

But there would be exceptions. (Remember the overused phrase “the devil is in the details?”) Wireless access to the internet would not be covered. New services that internet service providers might offer would not be covered. Essentially, the proposal is to allow the FCC to have authority over existing wired services only.

This “proposal” changes nothing, except to make it more important that we tell the FCC to take back the authority it relinquished and impose reasonable regulation on the existing internet services (wired, wireless, or what-have-you) and on all new services as well. It is critical that the internet remain open and equally available to all, at reasonable cost.

According to Jay Schwartzman, senior VP and policy director of the Media Access Project, the plan “creates an Internet for the haves and an Internet for the have-nots.” He goes on to point out that implementing the proposal “may make some services unaffordable for consumers and access to those services unavailable to new start-ups.” That is to say, the proposal would result in a tiered internet, where you’d have to pay more for some services and some data. Not good for the consumer—you and me—and not good for start-up businesses.

One FCC commissioner, Michael J. Copps, opposes the proposal and feels that “It is time…to reassert F.C.C. authority over broadband telecommunications, to guarantee an open Internet now and forever, and to put the interests of consumers in front of the interests of giant corporations.” But FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is wishy-washy on the subject. Although he says that “it is essential that the Internet itself remain open, however users reach it,” he also says that there may be benefits in broadband providers “offering managed services in limited circumstances.”

Chairman (and Commissioner) Genachowski needs some backbone, and ought to stop playing nice-nice with the big internet service providers. They are, as I have said before, common carriers, and the FCC should not negotiate with them. The FCC needs to assert its authority to regulate all common carriers providing services over the internet, whether wired or wireless. Then it needs to do what the Communications Act of 1934 told it to do 75 years ago: make the wired and wireless communication networks equally available to all of the people of the United States.

If you have not already done so, please write Mr. Genachowski and tell him so. His email address is Julius.Genachowski@fcc.gov. Send copies to the President and your senators and congressman, whose contact information is easily available at Congress.org. If you want to send snail mail, Chairman Genachowski’s address is: Federal Communications Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554.

The problem is that broadband carriers (like AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon) can change things so that some kinds of data go faster, and other kinds go slower, and they’d like to do that. They’d like to charge more for some kinds of data than other kinds of data. They’d like to scan your emails for key words so they could sell your name to marketers who do “targeted marketing.” They’d like to make exclusive deals with certain blogs and web sites–and block your access to competing blogs and web sites. They’d like to do lots of things, none of which are in your interest, and most of which will end up costing you money and limiting your access to internet sites and information.

The way things stand today, they can do it. The FCC, which used to enforce the rules on the internet, decided a few years ago that it didn’t want to do that any more, so at this point internet services provided by broadband carriers are pretty much unregulated.

But the FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 with the mission to “make available, so far as possible, to all people of the United States . . . A rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and worldwide wire and radio communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, [and] for the purpose of promoting the safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communication.” The internet carriers clearly provide communications services: the FCC has jurisdiction. All it needs to do is to formally declare that it has jurisdiction! That will give it the ability it gave up several years ago to regulate internet providers the way it regulates other common carriers.

In May, the FCC announced a “third way” plan to regulate internet common carriers a little bit, and entered negotiations with Google and Verizon, which were cutting a deal about the internet. The terms have not been announced, but the deal apparently foundered. Meanwhile, the FCC’s plan has apparently foundered too; that’s just as well, because the FCC shouldn’t be negotiating with members of the industry–It should be regulating them.

I don’t suggest extensive regulation. But, like the telephone system, the internet is operated by common carriers. Common carriers should allow all users–information providers and information users–equal access to everything that’s out there, while protecting our privacy–and at fair and reasonable cost. That won’t happen without regulation.

I urge you to write to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to tell him you want the FCC to declare its jurisdiction over internet service providers, and to ensure that the common carriers who operate the internet are appropriately regulated. You can send him an email at Julius.Genachowski@fcc.gov (and it would be a good idea to copy the President and your senators and congressman). If you want to send snail mail, Chairman Genachowski’s address is Federal Communications Commission, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington, DC 20554.

Now let’s change things just a little. You’re a police officer, and your duty is to serve and protect the public against criminals, and to preserve law and order by preventing crime. Look around the room: there are two people talking animatedly in Spanish. The beetle-browed lout is black and tough-looking. One of the women has coffee-colored skin and flashing black eyes; she’s talking quietly in some kind of accent to a guy with a big nose and a better tan than John Boehner–and his doesn’t come out of a bottle.

Every one of those people fits the popular profile of a criminal, a terrorist, or an illegal alien. But if you’re a police officer you’d better not arrest any of them without probable cause.

The term comes from the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It means that a police officer must have a reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime before taking action.

The way you look is not probable cause. The way you speak is not probable cause. Officer, you’d better have a lot more than that! If there’s an APB out for a 6-foot 4-inch black guy with really thick eyebrows…maybe you keep an eye on him, but don’t make any moves without more evidence, because he’s actually a defensive tackle in the NFL looking for a quiet evening away from his immature teammates.

How about that Spanish speaking, foreign looking couple? Before you get out the cuffs and point them toward the border you should know that they are Italian Americans, born here, and just back from a two-year assignment in Spain teaching English as a second language. They think speaking Spanish is fun.

Well there’s still the dark and flashy woman quietly making nice (in an accent) with a guy who looks middle-eastern. He’s actually a buyer for an Israeli technology company and she’s a representative of a Silicon Valley startup.

And that nice, congenial guy passing you the plate of crackers spread with cream cheese or Brie? He just flew in from Pakistan, where he spent several weeks learning how to make bombs—and talk nicely to Americans.

The point is this: The way you look; the way you sound; the things you do may be components of probable cause, but by themselves they are virtually meaningless. Very few bulgy black guys commit crimes: most of them just want to look tougher than their buddies to impress their girlfriends. The vast majority of people who enjoy speaking Spanish, or who speak it at work, are naturalized citizens or were born here of citizens. And many people who look Middle Eastern are Jewish Americans, Israelis, Italians, Spanish, or Hindus from India. Look at Moslems. Even if you could positively identify them with no errors as being Moslem, you need to be aware that the percentage of Moslems who are terrorists is vanishingly small.

Profiling may help, but the detail in the profile had better be very good. If not, officer, you’re going to be bothering, annoying, and harassing thousands and thousands of innocent people; delaying them from going about their affairs, embarrassing them (and yourself), and angering them. Stand by for the lawsuits.

You see, in this country the Government doesn’t have its fingers in every move you make. It’s not allowed to watch you or listen to you, except in very limited circumstances. Our Constitution and laws protect you from unusual search, seizure, and arrest…even if you look funny.

Better tell our lawmakers, not to mention the Supreme Court, that we want to keep it that way. We are the United States of America. Our Constitution and legal system have served us well for well over 200 years. We ought to have the confidence to know that they will continue to serve us well.

Now, I didn’t hear his whole speech, but in the clip Olbermann showed, Poe was advocating that we seal the border with Mexico by using more technology and more people, saying that “Government doesn’t have the moral will” to do it. He’s probably right–especially if you substitute the word “political” for “moral.” I firmly believe that we could effectively seal our Southern Border if we would devote the resources it takes.

I’m not talking about building brick and mortar walls, although they are a part of the solution. I’m talking about drone aircraft (some are already in use) backed up by rapid response units, advanced equipment that can sniff out drugs or people, and enough Border Patrol agents to get the job done. We could even, if necessary, bring in the military. Give them some special training and they could certainly help the Border Patrol.

Controlling the border is only part of the problem: there are millions of people who want to come here and who have applied legally, and there are millions more who are already here illegally. Controlling immigration and making sure that everybody who is here is here legally is a bigger and horrendously more complex problem.

The laws on who can get in to the U.S as permanent or temporary residents are so complex that I doubt if anybody understands them–and so changeable that eligibility changes radically on an annual basis. The laws need to be simplified and made rational, so that the people we admit are positive influences on our culture and economy, and not simply useful to businesses or individuals. And if we are a compassionate country as well as a country of laws, our immigration laws need to provide for unfortunates as well.

The content of those laws is far too broad a subject to be covered here. But I believe that current laws do not permit enough temporary unskilled and semi-skilled laborers. We need them to do the jobs many citizens won’t do; but we need to treat them fairly, pay them properly, and send them back when their work is done. Similarly, we should encourage foreign students to become temporary residents while they pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees. And unless they have applied for permanent residence we should promptly send them back upon graduation. Other classes of temporary immigrants include those who bring critical skills needed by businesses. The requirements need to be enforced far more strictly, and like the others, people with critical skills need to be sent home when the job is done.

Then there is the problem of the millions of illegal immigrants who are already here. Proposed solutions range from amnesty to shipping them home. Well, we’ve already tried amnesty: it didn’t work, as witness the number of illegal immigrants here today. The problem is, simply shipping them home won’t work either. It’s draconian, in many cases morally intolerable, and impractical. Obviously, criminals must be punished–and then deported. But most of the illegal immigrants are not criminals, except that they committed a misdemeanor by coming here illegally. Most are working–at very low wages–and paying at least some taxes. Many have families who, in many cases did not choose to come here but who came here as children or spouses. Some have children who were born here and who are, therefore, U.S. citizens.

I believe that there ought to be “a path to citizenship” for most illegal immigrants. Not all, by any means, but most. That path must blend with the path taken by those who have already applied, and must depend on the good behavior of the individuals. It must not be easy (although it might in a few cases include amnesty) but it must be possible.

We need a serious, courteous debate on border control and immigration law. We need to get rid of the bigotry and partisanship and, for once, consider what is right for the country–and our consciences.