Immigration is an International Issue

The common mistake we make in our immigration policy is that too many people start with the assumption that immigration is a domestic issue.

In reality, it is an international issue.

Because the movement of people around the world is first and foremost an international issue, our policies toward immigration should be driven by international relations.

Our immigration policy needs to look country by country to see what is going on with that country.

Let's say we are allies with a country with liberal immigration policies and we have migration parity with that nation. Emigration to and immigration from that country should be relative easy.

In contrast, if a country has punitive immigration policies or there is a great imbalance of migration, then we need to address those issues.

Sometimes there are really nasty things going on in the world.

For example, a few years back, China was oppressing its Tibetan population. The United States took in many Tibetans with the goal of helping to preserve their language and culture.

There is value in diversity. If a group is threatened with extinction, then there is value in finding a place where the culture can continue to exist.

Sadly, taking in refugees during an ethnic cleansing enables and rewards the rogues engaged in the ethnic cleansing. If a hole bunch of people show up at the border saying their land was taken and they were pointed to the US, we should do something about the theft of land.

Colonization is another issue that mars migration. Historically powerful groups would send people abroad to colonize foreign lands for political gain. Colonization has proven to be a destructive thing.

It still goes on. In the 1970s, Turkey sent a large number of people to create an Islamic majority on the island of Cyprus.

Russian immigration to the Baltic States last century appears to have been an effort to crush and subdue the Baltic people.

Democracies are prone to demographic manipulation by migration. Democracies must question large migrations. If politically powerful groups are moving people about for apparent political reasons, we must take note and respond.

Some of the Islamic migration to Europe of late appears to be colonization and not immigration.

There have been many cases in American history in which groups manipulated migration to gain local political control. Native Americans can justly point to immigration as the reason for the loss of their lands.

I am pro-migration, but I also realize that the world must carefully monitor migration for shenanigans. Ideally an immigration policy should study migration patterns and be nimble enough to respond to abuse.

The fact that migration is first and foremost an international issue does not mean that immigration does not have domestic connotations.

Domestically, America has some really big problems with illegal immigration. The problems generally start with illegal border crossings or visa violations.

The visa system was established to facilitate world travel. A visa is a signed contract that says a person will enter the country on this date and depart on that date.

A violation of a visa should be handled in the context of the visa and not as an immigration case. The systematic violation of our visa system is troubling not only because it creates undocumented workers, but because the violations put the visa system and international travel in jeopardy.

A visa is a contract. The contractual penalty for violating a visa is deportation. Deportation sounds mean in day to day context, but the context of a visa violation in the contract of the visa.

Taking a person's car as a punishment sounds evil and cruel, but if the repossessing a car because someone violated the terms of the loan on the car is proper in the context of the loan.

Immigration is not simply an internal policy. World migration is an international issue. As a nation of immigrants, it is my hope that the US will continue to play a leading role in promoting liberal migration policies.

IMHO, whenever there appears to be migration parity, then migration should be easy.

If migration appears to be putting an indigenous group at a disadvantage to a larger power (colonization), the US and the international community should take note.

Whenever there is a great disparity in migration, we need to figure out why and seek to find ways to address the cause of inequity.

The demographics and political landscape of the world is in constant flux, which means that we need a nimble immigration policy that changes with the times.

America should be proactive in encouraging international travel. International travel depends on the integrity of the visa system.

By enforcing our internal immigration policies we actually make it easier to promote liberalization of migration policies abroad.

Because migration is an international issue, attempts to derive immigration policy from the aether or attempts at comprehensive immigration reform are all doomed to fail. The ideal system is based on careful observation and reaction to international migration policies and issues.

FAT PEOPLE Compress the Earth

I've always wanted to write for a "scientific" journal. So, I thought I would quickly whip up some of the tripe that passes for science these days. Here goes:

This just in: A new "scientific" study finds that FAT PEOPLE COMPRESS THE EARTH!

Yep, that's right, FAT PEOPLE eat more than is socially just. Having committed food injustice, FAT PEOPLE artificially compress the earth when they go stomping about.

Each foot step of a fat person exerts more pressure on the surface of the earth than foot steps by skinny people which leads to excess wear, tear and compression on the surface.

If this compression of the earth crosses the tipping point, the earth would become so compressed that it would collapse in on itself and turn into a black hole!

Because there's more fat people in the US than China, the ongoing crisis of food injustice has created a situation in which the world is going all tipsy.

Dare I say, if not for the Peoples' Republic of Cuba offsetting the US, the food injustice of the United States would have caused the earth to spin off its axis and shoot into outer space!

The US could learn a lot from Cuba because Cuba is based on scientific socialism. Scientific socialism has the word "scientific" in it. This means it is better than the free market which leaves things up to chance.

In conclusion, the US should adopt scientific socialism. Socialism would stop the compression of the earth by reducing food injustices. Not only that, history shows that countries that have adopted scientific socialism have turned large numbers of people into compost and compost breaks up the soil.

Yep. I would have fit right in with the crowd writing "science" journals.

Hatch v. Liljenquist

I confess. During the Tea Party I did something I never thought I would. I registered as a Republican with a pathetic hope that just maybe the Republican Party might change.

That hope has proven wrong, but I haven't officially changed back to independent ... which means I could vote in Tuesday's Republican primary.

The most interesting vote in the primary is the Utah Senate race between Orrin Hatch and Dan Liljenquist.

Hatch's campaign poster shows Mitt Romney with the wording "It's Utah's Time to Lead."

Uh, Mitt Romney isn't a Utahan!

Any non-Mormon with Mitt's record would be discarded as an East Coast liberal-elite.

I've lived in Utah since 1976. I am still treated as a paraiah.

Hatch is running a campaign saying his victory would give collective power to a group code named "Utahan" that includes himself and Mitt Romney, but openly ignores people like me.

Hmmm, I wonder what that group might be?

Hatch has a long history of compromise and favors centralized power over personal ownership. Liljenquist echoes the themes of the Tea Party and Glenn Beck.

I think this is an interesting race that will determine if the Republcan Party under Romney will retain any of the Tea Party flavor or if the Party will devolve back into being a shill for large collective interests.

Sports and Recreation OWN3D

Have you ever noticed that most organized sports and recreation in the United States is own3d by the state or own3d by crony capitalist closely connected with the state?

Since most K-12 schools are own3d by the state, most high school sport is own3d by the state. The same is true with College Sports. Most colleges are state own3d with the industry regulated by the NCAA, Sports is governed by the NCAA which is at best a quasi private entity owned by members.

In professional sports, the teams are all associated with states or cities. In many cases the teams play in state own3d stadiums (built on the ideals of the roman coliseums). In many cases big business owns the naming rights to the local coliseum.

The ideal of state own3d in one where sedentary people gather in 70,000 seat arenas to watch an over the top competition while gradually turning into lumps themselves.

When I look at big sports, I wondered if this recreation of the Roman Coliseum model really was the free market approach to sports.

Of course it isn't.

In a free market, anyone who wanted to play could throw together a team and play.

I then asked if beating an opponent really is the goal of sports?

Of course it isn't.

The heart of the free market is the free mind. The focus of a truly free market sports would be about developing the individual.

I looked at the whole sports world with a critical eye and asked how I could improve upon to create truly free market sport.

Way back in the 1980s, I invented a new social networking sport called "juggleball."

Oddly, you don't have to know how to juggle to play juggleball. The real heart of the sport is the exchange of goods between people. Everyone starts with two numbered juggleballs. As you play the game you exchange these balls and other tokens with players.

We record each of the transactions on Juggleball.com. This will create a really fun social map.

I led into this post with a discussion of ownership. Ownership is key to this game. In this game, people will move around from place to place exchanging balls.

(Yes, this game that I invented back in the 1980s is actually a bit like FourSquare in that businesses might want to declare themselves a juggleball venue to attract customers).

I have a whole business model that is ready to go from the moment that I find a person who is willing to actually engage in life. I actually designed the game so that venues would sell tokens that would be part of the game.

Sadly, I live in Utah, which is a closed  and oppressive society*. However, I will be traveling to Washington State for a wedding at the beginning of August. If anyone in Utah, Idaho, Western Montana, Washington or Oregon is interested in playing a fun game in August, please contact me.

The game is open to members of both sex. People of all age can play the game. I would like to start with people over 18. If you are under 18, have your guardian sign up.

I invite anyone on the planet to contact me.

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*Yes, I live in Utah. No, I am not LDS. Juggleball is open to people of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

Restoring Small Business

The heart of a free economy is small business. Sadly, after years of socialism and business consolidation, the American small business community is in shambles.

To restore the American system in self-rule, lovers of liberty need to do more than limit government. They need to come up with devices that starts generating a large number of small businesses. Specifically, patriots need to concentrate on creating businesses to compete against areas dominated by big biz and big govt.

If we could create a mechanism that taught people to see their own lives as a small business, it would completely change their outlook on life, economics and politics.

What is needed is for an innovative group willing to go beyond free market rhetoric and do something.

I happen to have a wonderful system for creating new businesses that I would love to try.

The business is a group recreational activity that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. It costs relatively little to start a business in this field. The business is a fun game taht involves social networking.

To get started, I need simply find a few people who are not sticks in the mud.

I live in Salt Lake City. I will travel to Washington State in August for a wedding. My current plan is to go up I25 through Missoula then across I90 thru Spokane to the wedding then come back on I84.  This means I can visit people in Utah, Idaho, Western Montana, Washington, or Oregon. (I would like to visit Eugene).

On a site note: I would be happy to travel to Colorado, Arizona, Nevada or even Southern California, provide there was significant interent in starting a freedom centric business in any of these states.

If you are interested, please give me your name and phone number on my Contact Form, I will then call you to discuss the business. It is a recreational business. the business will entail social networking and organizing samll recreational events. The work itself will involve sales.

Dependent on a Third Party

The fact that most Americans are dependent on a third party employer as their single source of income is a bigger problem for the nation than the fact that we don't have enough jobs to satisfy demands.

When people have multiple sources of income, they can move between different positions and activities as the market changes to optimize their resources.

When people are reduced to dependency on a single third party for their livelihood, they become alienated and develop a need for big political forces to enter the picture to regulate that dependency.

The solution to this problem is ownership. The key to the American Experiment in self-rule was distributed ownership. In a system of distributed ownership, people are able to invest in their individual business and gradually shake off dependency.

Sadly, our modern financial system was designed to the desires of big businesses seeking to dominate the entire market.  To dominate markets, big firms take on dangerously leveraged positions which create systemic faults in our economy. The big businesses start by using their huge position to swamp competitors. As their leveraged position tends to be large and unwiedly the big firms end up swamping the economy at large.


Sadly, when political leaders attempt to address the jobs issue, they invariably play into the hands of big business by flooding the market with cheap credit. This might create a temporary unstable boom. The credit bubble always bursts.

The better solution is to turn away from the jobs issue and concentrate on property rights issues. If the government were to concentrate on helping people rebuild their individual ownership, we could stabilize the economy and help restore widespread prosperity.

The Problem Isn't Jobs!!!!

The issue is not jobs. The primary issue is ownership.

If we had a healthy distribution of ownership, we'd have full employment (along with a better distribution of wealth).

Ownership is the missing key to the American experiment in self-rule. The ideal of self rule is contingent on the idea that each person would have a little domain over which they had "say-so."

Traditionally, people understood property rights to mean "say-so." The owner of a property has the say-so over that property.

This was a radical departure from feudalism. Feudalism was a socio-economic system formed around the political order (a class society). A small ruling class at the top ruled. Everyone else was perceived as workers. In feudalism, you had a ruling class at the top that drew its power from the government. Everyone else was perceived to be a worker.

A small middle class of property owners formed in this system. The Middle class consisted of merchants, manufacturers and professionals. The middle class built its position by reinvesting the fruit of the labor into their businesses.

Feudalism had a corrupt ruling class and an oppressed working class, but a middle class of property owners began to thrive.

In 1776, the classical liberal Adam Smith noted that this middle class was the ones producing the Wealth of the Nation.

In that same year, the American Colonies rebelled against the crown. The colonies established a new system of government with constitutionally limited government and a very large class of property owners.

Please note, by "middle class" I mean the class between the rulers (those who derive their income from government) and the workers (those who derive income by selling labor).

Yes, I know you were taught that "middle class" means the middle of the income bell curve. That model is stupid. Income is always distributed in bell curve with the average being in the middle. The modern definition is a meaningless tautology. The traditional class structure had a ruling class at the top, and most people were workers. The middle class was the property owning class between the ruling and middle class.

People who work for the government writing regulations (rules) are part of the ruling class even if they have a middlesome income. If you derive your position by ruling, you are a ruler. If you derive your position from working, you are a worker. If you derive your position from owning, you are an owner. Capiche? Political science isn't rocket science.

Long ago, the American system of self-rule created a new society with widespread property ownership. This system pulled a large number of people from the working class into the property owning middle class. This experiment in self rule led to widespread prosperity.

The members of the ruling class despise this system with every fiber of their being.

Since the very beginning of the American experiment in self-rule, members of the ruling class used their perches in government, banks, academics and the media to cloud this all important issue of ownership.

Don't you see? The whole key to self-rule is that people need a little domain over which they can rule. The concept of self-rule is meaningless if most people are left with nothing under their control.

To revive the American experiment in self-rule we need to work diligently to create a world in which the people have little domains over which they can rule.

The dialectical split between Left and Right will not revive the concept of self ownership. No matter shrill Conservatives are in denouncing the "liberal" left, we cannot revive America until we address the issue of ownership (property rights).

Contrary to what the right claims, the American Revolution WAS NOT a conservative revolution. The American Revolution was a radical event which completely changed the social order. People who derived their position from the crown were put out and the property owning middle class was elevated.

The Conservatives of 1776 supported King George and fought for the crown.

The first enemies of freedom were the conservatives who drew their power from the class structure.

The philosopher Hegel (1770-1831) is a great example of the thinking of the arch-conservatives who were trying to rebrand and revive the ideals of feudalism.

In Hegel we see a revival of the dialectics of ancient Greece coupled with a dialectical interpretation of history centering on conflict and change.

Hegel could be called an arch-conservative.

The ruling class of the early 1800s could not regain control through straight forward debate. So, they sought to subvert the debate by muddling the meanings of terms and through dialectics.

Marx (1818-1833) was a master of the dialectics. Like Hegel, he despised the property owning middle class. Marx sought to create a new social revolution led by the intelligentsia that would unite the ruling class and the working class against the property owning middle class.

To do this, Marx wrote a large tome called "Das Kapital" that presented a new economy centered around large pools of capital controlled by evil villains called capitalists. Marx claimed that the revolution against capitalism would result in a new social utopia called "communism."

Marx never defined "communism" beyond vague imagery, but he described capitalism in great detail.

The great irony of history is that Karl Marx is the father of Capitalism.

Marx's Capitalism has subtle differences from the free market. In capitalism, people are ruled by pools of capital with most people being reduced to the status of worker.

In Marxian dialectics, a conservative right argues for a society ruled by capitalist and large capital pools in conflict with radicals who argue for society ruled by a totalitarian state.

Both sides of Marx's false dichotomy are opposed to the classical liberal ideal of free people who rule themselves.

To restore America we simply must restore the concept of ownership.

Unfortunately the dialecticians have tied our political system in a knot. The group that seeks greater (if not totalitarian) state control have captured the term "liberal" and turned. Using the techniques of Hegel and Marx, the left has turned the political term "liberal" into its opposite.

The conservative side is equally problematic. Traditionally, conservative meant those who supported the top down social order of the monarchy. Many of the people who support the views of the Founders call themselves "conservative." The group also includes people who argue Marx's anti-thesis and support capitalism as Marx defined capitalism.

When a person claims to be "conservative" who supports "capitalism," one has to ask what type of conservative?  Does the person aspire to create a society centered on self-ownership, or is the person interested in a top-down society formed around the capital structure?

The market described by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations is a completely different beast than the one described by Karl Marx in Das Kapital.

The top heavy capitalism of Marx reduces most people to the status of "worker," with only a few people engaged in meaningful ownership.

If you have a society formed around the model presented by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, the workers must seek protection from unions and the state or they will be ripped apart and reduced to subsistence.

The key to America's greatness was not the limited government. It was the unlimited people. America was a society of property owners.

When a conservative politician spouts the view that Americans are nothing but workers, that conservative politician has bought into the Marxian definition of Capitalism. If we really want to restore America, we need to restore the idea that Americans are owners, and not just overpaid workers.

The problem isn't a lack of jobs. The problem is that American's have allowed the enemies of freedom reduce a once great society of owners to a mediocre society of workers. If we want to restore the society of owner's we need to recognize that the Capitalism from Das Kapital is not the same as the Free Market established by the US Founders.

On Sublation

A chain of thought is only as strong as its weakest link.


When people try to defend a given system of thought, they often concentrate on what they perceive to be the weakest part of their argument.

For example, people fear that a free market is bound to devolve into chaos. In reaction to this fear, proponents of the free market concentrate heavily on how order appears in free market systems. Some conservative pundits double down by de-emphasizing the liberating aspects of freedom.

On the other side of the aisle, socialism is a top-down system built around the social order. Socialist societies tend to demand conformity. Historically, many socialist societies were formed around ethnic groups. Such socialist societies created fantastic racial histories about why their race is intended to dominate and rule over others. Racist forms of socialism would use open racial oppression to keep people in check.

Socialism has an equally strange relation to religion. Prior to Marx socialist groups used radicalize religion to impose order. Marx stirred things up by using radicalized irreligion for the same end.

Neither radical-religious nor radical-irreligious forms of socialism are tolerant of different beliefs. Some people who wave the banner "secularism" are not tolerant of other's beliefs.

Since socialism demands conformity, many socialists is a hard time allowing diverse thoughts. The result is that the history of socialism is ugly. Attempts to impose socialism were rife with genocide, ethnic cleansing, forced famines and other atrocities.

By the mid-twentieth century, the closed nature of socialism had become so ugly that socialist thinkers of the progressive era realized they had to engineer a complete about face on race to save their ideology.

Socialist intellectuals like Karl Popper realized that, to revive interest in socialism, they must rebrand it from the ground up as "The Open Society." The open society uses radical-diversity to spread socialist ideals.

Radical diversity is not all bad. Some good things came from the effort.

In the United States we find that, prior to the Civil Rights movement, the left used race in its demand for bigger government. Segregation demanded government action to keep races apart. The KKK was a leftist group akin to OWS. Jim Crow Laws came from the left.

Racism was no longer working for the left; so they adopted radicalized-diversity and the left turned on the racist. This was a good thing.

Since the left polices thought and does not allow a diversity of opinion they were able to turn on this issue in a single generation.

Radical diversity made for paradoxical politics.

The free market is fundamentally diverse and does not actively police thoughts. A person can have regressive racist thoughts. A business owner can have a small firm that only does business with members of his race. Such people miss out, but such is their prerogative as free individuals.

As the proponents of radical diversity drove racist from their ranks, they were able to frame the free market as racist because it allowed diverse opinions.

I must add a note here. The free market allows diverse thought, but the system cannot allow groups to lock other groups out of the market. For a free market to survive, people must take action to prevent groups from denying freedom to others.

This statement is not about the diversity of opinion. You can think whatever you like, but people's freedoms stop when they start infringing on the freedoms of others. I believe that free marketeers have a duty to study the market and remove any artificial barriers preventing people from participating in the market.

Now, I applaud the left for turning against racism. By addressing one of the biggest weaknesses of socialism, the left created a paradoxical world in which they frame freedom of thought as racist, and a system that demands conformity to radical-diversity as diverse.

The German philosopher Hegel called the process in which terms turn into their opposite "sublation." The left studied sublation in detail, and are skilled at playing "conservatives" in ways that systematically destroy the free market.

Conservatives get played by the left in many different ways.

The primary concern of a conservative is preserving the social order. Conservatives (unlike Libertarians or Classical Liberals) are terrified by freedom.

Contrary to claims, the US Founders were NOT conservatives. The conservatives of 1776 were called Tories. The conservatives of 1776 supported King George.

The American Revolution was not a "Conservative Revolution." It completely disrupted the social order. Prior to the revolution, people at the top of the social order derived their position from their relation with the crown. The revolution flipped things on its head.

After the revolution a new social order appeared with the property owners at the top.

The conservative movement we know today did not really exist until the 1960s. The primary concern of this conservative movement is preserving the new social order that evolved in a free society.

Modern Conservatism is paradoxical. Conservatives support a social order that evolved in a free society and not at the logical foundations of freedom. Many are terrified at the prospects of liberty.

The Modern left has learned to play on the fears of Conservatives by encouraging self-destructive and libertine behavior. Conservatives respond by balling up and supporting anti-market institutions.

Because Conservatives are so caught up in defending institutions that impose order, they've failed to notice that many of these institutions have evolved into things that are both anti-market and anti-freedom.

If you look at our markets and communities, you will find that they are dominated by large institutions which lock large segments of the population from meaningful participation in society.

I've concentrated heavily on insurance. With insurance, people put their health care resources into big thrid party pools. The owners of the pools become ungodly rich and the people lose control over their health care decisions.

In three years, I've been unable to find a conservative group willing to discuss alternatives to insurance.

The problem is not just insurance. Big finance has created a market that is able to lock most people out of meaningful participation in business.

Bungleheaded conservatives are so caught up in preserving their precious little social order that they are willing to sell out on the fundamental issue of supporting liberty.

As proof of the bungling conservative, we need look no further than the presidential election in which both the Democratic and Republican candidate support socializing health care via government controlled health exchanges.

Conservatives get so wrapped up in defending their social order and kicking down the people they don't like that they turn an inherently open society into a closed one. With their exclusive focus on preserving their social order through captured markets, Conservatives are part of the sublation of our once free society into its opposite.

Speaking of the term sublation. Did I ever mention? HEGEL WAS A CONSERVATIVE.

Big Business and Diversity

Paul Mero is in a tizzy today because several big companies are supporting gay-rights initiatives.

Over the weekend, I was drawn into a twitter dispute about Staples being a model for American business. I dislike the business model in which politically connected companies take out huge capital positions to dominate a market. I don't mind Staples, but I don't see it as the model I want for our economy.

During the dispute, I glanced through the Staples 2011 Financial Report. The report has a large section on the store's commitment to diversity. A major bullet point was "Joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) as a corporate member in support of its Supplier Diversity Initiative."

I have no problems with the NGLCC. Staples did the right thing by joining NGLCC.

Because Staples is a big firm seeking to dominate a market, it must do things to prove a commitment to diversity. This is what a company must to to dominate a diverse market.

The problem I see is that when we have an economy with just a few huge companies dominating whole market, those companies must fall into a given politically correct mold..

In contrast, when the market itself is diverse, then companies don't have to make politically correct pretenses about diversity.

The restaurant industry is a great example of a diverse market.

I've been to Mexican restaurant owned and run by Latinos. I've been to Brazilian Restaurants owned and run by Brazilians. I've been in Navajo Restaurants run by Native Americans, I've been to diners where the owners and employees were white. I've been to diners where the owner and staff were black. I have even been to a Chinese Restaurant where owners and employees were all Vietnamese.

I love the diversity of the restaurant industry and am not bothered at all that these restaurants are not, themselves, diverse.

I've noticed that there is a great diversity among Chambers of Commerce. CoCs often target geographic and demographic groups. I've noticed that CoCs for women are generally filled with women owned businesses, CoCs for Hispanics with Hispanic owned businesses, CoCs for Blacks tend to be filled with African American Businesses. I suspect that most of the business members of the NGLCC are Gay or Lesbian.

While small businesses rarely belong to more than one CoC. Big business join many CoCs in an effort to market to the businesses. This is especially true in the office supply market. Office supply firms should join every CoC in their market. It is good business.

A true free market will, by nature, be diverse. When the market is diverse it is okay for the businesses in the market to play up on ethnicity because the market itself is diverse.

Paul Mero's article makes the salient point: "To me, the most interesting aspect of these claims is how these political shenanigans in the name of healthy work environments and personal rights create a legal conclusion only resulting in redefining marriage."

A market full of small family owned businesses is likely to have a stronger support of traditional marriage.

In Utah, we have businesses owned by polygamist groups. I've worked with companies formed around non-traditional marriages. They ones I worked with were dysfunctional.

The fact that big companies trip over each other to show a commitment to diversity is the direct result of having a market driven by a desire of big players to dominate entire markets.

In conclusion, I am more upset that the Sutherland Institute (a group that takes money with false claims to supporting free market economics) is wasting its time on a culture war than I am upset with the fact that corporations play a charade of supporting diversity.

A truly free market will have a great diversity of businesses in it. Some of the businesses are apt to be owned by [gasp] gay or lesbians.

The difference is that the free market is a natural diversity and big business is a political and contrived diversity.

It's the People that Matter, Not the Man at the Top

IMHO, the Wisconsin Recall Election was the most important vote for the Tea Party. Scott Walker won the 2011 gubernatorial race with tea party support and the movement exhausted a great deal of capital in Walker's stand against the excesses of Public Employee Unions.

As I understand, Walker supported collective bargaining for wages, but did not want the unions to be able to unilaterally set public policy.

See, if you have an unelected group that can set public policy, then you subvert the democratic process. Public employee unions essentially devolve into the King's Court where a corrupt, untouchable group of government officials simply divides the spoils of the state.

Oddly, one of the biggest area of contention is employee benefits (insurance). State benefit packages are often used a political troughs. The scandal with benefits is that so much of our "benefits" are skimmed off and used for political purposes.

I actually spent two days trying to write a blog post about the Wisconsin recall.

The truth is, I was so depressed about the presidential primary, that I couldn't complete the posts.

When I heard on the radio that the race was too close to call. I actually felt sick.

To my delight, Walker won the race 53% to 46%. My guess is that people lied on the exit polls. I lied the only time I gave an exit poll. (I told the pollster what the pollster what I thought she wanted to hear because I was wasn't sure who she was. I now avoid any questions about my ballot.)

I am SO GLAD Wisconsin rejected the recall.

When all is sad and done, the people matter more than any given elected official. The people of Wisconsin shone through. Hooray!

I am sad, however, that the Tea Party exhausted so much of its political clout on this public employee union issue while ignoring the much more important issue of health care reform.

I don't see Wisconsin as a great political win for the Tea Party because the series of action and reaction failed to result in new thinking. It simply left the state more divided than ever.

Only a partisan sees a deeply divided people as victory.

To me, the apparent fact that the Tea Party led to partisan division and not to new ideas suggests that the movement was a failure.

Where are the Tea Partiers willing to discuss ideas?

I would love more than anything to find such a group. I traveled three thousand miles last year in search for such a group, and found none.

But back to Wisconsin. I dislike Community Organizers of the Alinsky tradition because they organize one side of the community against the other resulting in greater division.

Reactionaries become mirrors of the things they react against. See, the Alinsky method is dependent on the right abandoning reason to react in a partisan manner.

I am distraught that Republicans have abandoned the fight for free market health reform to concentrate on partisanship.

It is the people that matter. Not the guy at the top. When Republicans abandon the war of ideas simply to get their man at the top, they set up the nation for failure in the long term.