As IF Times

link Death penalty: Exhaustive study finds death penalty costs California $184 million a year – latimes.com.

Really?  It costs an estimated $308 million dollars to carry out a single death penalty in the state of California?  In essence, the cost of dying is thousands of times more than  the cost of living there.  This is certainly a business that can be performed more cheaply by off shore labor.  In fact, an offshore company can charge half of what it ‘costs’ in that state, and still make a pretty good profit.  They would only need about one contract every few years or so to stay in business.  Heck, just across the border in Mexico, there are those practising the craft all the time for free.  Come to think of it, why bother to execute them when for only the cost of a bus ticket, we can send them to Mexico wearing cartel gang colors.

Unable to convince the public on any given policy that they don’t agree with, the progressive left defaults to appealing to economic arguments to support their positions.   In this particular case, that strategy backfires on them.   As they break down the costs involved, it highlights the ridiculous maze of bureaucracy that must be navigated in order to carry out the state laws.  The logic thread then goes, ‘why not abolish it altogether’ since it is so cost inefficient.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same argument for abandoning the war on drugs.  Which is the same argument for not enforcing illegal immigration laws.  Using the same logic, it must be an astronomical number for police to enforce any kind of laws.  Then why have police?  In fact, why have laws?

I wonder if that same argument could be used on the cost of medical care?  Recently, a friend of mine had a small accident in the US where he was visiting.  This required a trip to the hospital.  The cost for fixing up a dented finger was over $4000.  No rational person would then conclude that the cost of  this procedure means that medical care should therefore be abandoned because of cost.  It only makes sense to fix the root causes of why the system is the way it is.   I wonder if lawyers are involved.

Clearly the cancer of bureacracy has infected  all areas of public life.  This cancer is hiding as a “cost of implementation” when progressives want to rationalize their agenda and when other arguments fail the sniff test of logic and morality.   Soon, it will be too expensive to feed the kids…..

link Pushy fliers may show up on TSA’s radar – USATODAY.com.

Much ink has been spilt on the “egregious” new law in Arizona attempting to suppress the chaos and violence associated with the out of control illegal immigration problem in that state.  Impassioned pleas from opponents of the new measure insist that the new law is draconian and and nothing less than a full assault on human rights and promotes racism.  Politicians at the highest level are denouncing the new law even though it essentially mirrors a federal law already on the books.  Even actors and comedians, known of course for their broad intellectual grasp of major issues, are weighing in with their opposition to the new law.  If an intellectual heavyweight such as George Lopez thinks the law is unjust, well maybe we’d better rethink the whole immigration policy.

What a waste of time.  There are far greater numbers of troublemakers attempting to get on planes than trying to sneak across borders.  Why waste time, effort, money and possibly life on enforcing such unpopular things such as immigration law.  The efforts are much better expended on airport harassment.  The cost benefit analysis skews the results considerably towards airport security as a means of spotting criminal behaviour.  Rather than having to pay trained police officers armed with deadly weapons, we need only pay for minimum wage workers to screen for troublemakers.  Instead of facing potentially armed drug criminals, the TSA people need only face the unarmed young and elderly.  Naturally, with all the vocal groups protesting human rights violations, they would have to exclude Muslims, Blacks and Hispanics from special screening.

If you are part of a constituency that has never had a history of causing grief to the nation, well you’re in for special scrutiny.  The elderly, the very young, Whites, Asians, business people, all will be easier targets of intimidation because there is no fear of these groups protesting their mistreatment.

As it stands now in the U.S., police officers feel reluctant to ask for legitimate identification for fear of stirring racism and profiling concerns.  At airport security, there is no such reluctance.  Heck, citizens can even be asked to strip to a certain degree and be felt up like a package of Charmin tissue.   Any protests will instantly plop their names onto an official troublemaker list and voila, a permanent criminal suspect is created.  As time goes on, this list can only grow as the definition of pushy travellers gets fuzzier and fuzzier.  Statistics will soar on the TSA troublemaker database and will be justification to demand more money into their coffers to combat the rising incidences of disturbing airport behaviour.  Which of course, will lead to even more invasive and surly TSA procedures. It will be entirely logical to transfer the weapons from Border agents to arm the TSA staff.

Illegal entry across U.S. borders will cease to be an enforceable pursuit and movement there will be free and easy.  Just as long as they don’t attempt to fly in.