RAP Tax, Transportation (Question 1), more

Despite the title, I’ll keep this brief. If you’re interested in vouchers, please refer to the consolodated post which includes some more updates.

RAP Tax

I’ve addressed it several times and would refer you to this link for my opinions/information (scroll past the first post) on it. Additionally, the “arguments against” section of the RAP Tax voter information pamphlet (PDF) is in line with how I feel as well. Finally, as shocking as this may sound, the Standard Examiner Editorial Board is also opposed to the tax and urging a ‘no’ vote. See also: Citizens For Tax Fairness page on the issue.

Transportation Tax

I’ll refer this to the Transportation Tax Voter Information Pamphlet (pdf). I am aligned with the arguments against on this one as well. Enough is enough. See also: Citizens For Tax Fairness page on the issue.

Misc. Local Stuff

North Salt Lake City Council Election - Candidate Scott Briggs has signed the Citizens for Tax Fairness Tax pledge (more at the link) and the city council rejected the RAP tax.

Bountiful City Council Election - Good luck. All candidates support higher taxes, however one (Beth Holbrook), additionally, supports raising your fees for recycling. Chalk that up to voting for the least tax hungry candidates.

South Davis Recrecreation Center Claims Victim (Business)

Unsurprisingly, small business could not compete with the tax funded recreation center and one has folded. Here is a transcription of the letter to (now former) Xcel Fitness members:

Dear Xcel Fitness Member,

It’s been a thrilling 9 years since we first set up shop here in Bountiful. While many businesses have come and gone, Xcel Fitness’s goal has always been to remain a future of the Bountiful community. On behalf of our entire organization, I regretfully announce that we’ll no longer be doing business as Xcel Fitness effective Oct. 1st, 2007. We thank you for your years of loyalty - it has been a tremendous pleasure to help you achieve your fitness goals. However, I’m excited to announce that we’ve finalized plans to ensure that our fitness members, neighbors and friends continue to be served.

We’ve partnered with Gold’s Gym in an effort to keep the gym at 250 West 1500 South open. On october 2nd, 2007, our doors will re-open and continue doing business as Gold’s Gym. Closing this fitness facility altogether was never an option for me - l love and respect this community too much.

Xcel Fitness has worked hard to always be here for Davis County. l grew up in this community and wanted nothing more than to personally continue my commitment to my friends and neighbors here. We live in an area where two privately run gyms - Xcel Fitness and Gold’s Gym - should be able to thrive. The arrival of the tax-payer funded recreation center has created an unfortunate economic situation where that is no longer possible for each party. Whereas residents of Davis County previously had a choice of facilities they could patronize, now your tax money is funding a recreation center of which you’ll probably never even become a member. This situation made it imperative for the two privately owned fitness centers to come together.

Because of their market penetration and state-wide presence, Gold’s Gym was an obvious choice to continue the legacy of locally owned fitness facilities in Bountiful. Fifteen gyms from Bountiful to St. George are now available to our members. You’ll be able to enjoy amenities such as the new Cardio Cinema, swimming, spas and hot tubs, basketball, racquetball, and a huge variety of free exercise and aerobic classes.

Thank you for your support and patronage. l wish each of you the best of luck with Gold’s Gym, and hope you’ll find a new level of success in your health, fitness and life goals.

Sincerely,
Josh Smith
Owner of Xcel Fitness

Now there is one less fitness center in the area.

This means an job creator is gone, jobs have been lost and families affected by the decreased income. Additionally, an economic stimulus is gone and the future value and synergistic effects of that money (gyms need supplies, pay rent to the building/development owner, etc) are now also gone and a city has one less source of business tax revenue. All brought to you by government market intrusion.

UPDATE: Looks like Xcel owners Smith and Seljaas played with fire and got burned (City strikes rec center alliance, size limits) (excerpted):

Mayor Joe Johnson announced a new alliance between the private fitness industry and the newly formed South Davis Recreation District at Tuesday night’s council meeting, defusing a central accusation by a local tax-watch group.

“We had a nice discussion,” Johnson said after owners of Xcel, John Smith and Gary Seljaas, approached the city with their concerns with the Bountiful Recreation Center (the South Davis Cities Recreation Center (SDCRC), “and now we’re partners.”

“They said, ‘You can use our experts and expertise with your people,’” Johnson said recalling the meeting. The Xcel trainers will train people on exercise machines and teach fitness techniques. They will also teach classes on nutrition, health and fitness planning and methods.

Not sure if the Xcel people ever did get any work at the Recreation Center. I also wonder if it was legal to seemingly award a ‘no bid’ contract to Xcel to provide trainers?

Utah: Choice Destination for Illegal Immigrants

I found a USA Today article from four or five days ago (see: “Illegal immigrants moving out“). Here’s a highlight:

The three lived in Aurora, Colo., when Sanchez was fired from her job as district manager of a fast-food chain after she couldn’t provide a valid Social Security number. [ie she either didn't have one or used a stolen SSN that didn't match her name - Utah doesn't require employer ID verification, Colorado does]

Colorado has approved several immigration measures. One gives employers 20 days to check and photocopy documents such as driver’s licenses and Social Security cards, which new workers present to prove their legal status.

Because of the laws, Sanchez, her sister and nephew left five months ago. “I moved to Utah because they don’t have the same laws here,” she says.

Colorado has enacted tough laws (including employment verification). Utah continues to shrug off the identity theft associated with illegal immigrants and is becoming a much bigger magnet due to our inaction. We seem satisfied with selling off our children’s identities (see here, here, and here too) for cheap labor (Governor Huntsman doesn’t seem to have much problem with it). It appears that we’ll have plenty more sources of illegal labor on our children’s back. Unless we begin to act as surrounding states have, we can expect the problem to increase at a much higher rate.

For more information, there are plenty of links etc on my “Identity Theft” category.

If you are concerned about someone using your ID or your child’s identity (SSN, in particular) click here on what you can do (remember, your annual credit report by itself is not a good indicator of ID theft - see page 3, especially).

For more information on DHS’s employment verification programs click on the “ICE EEV (Verify Employment) Faq” and “ICE IMAGE (Verify I-9) Program” links in the ‘Blogroll’ (right side of this page). See also “Utah ID Theft and Employer Verification Hope?“.

Small Business and Illegal Immigration

This comes from CNN Money article entitled “Blowing the whistle on illegal immigrants” (excerpted):

To see the latest front in the war over illegal immigration, take a look at Mordechai Orian. The 41-year-old owns Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based service that supplies seasonal agricultural workers to apple, blueberry, and potato growers across the country. In May, Orian lost one of his biggest clients: Munger Bros., a Delano, Calif., blueberry farm, which decided to use a rival labor supplier, J&A Contracting of Bakersfield, Calif.

Munger Bros. executives say they switched suppliers when Global Horizons failed to live up to its contract, but Orian suspects a different motive. J&A, he says, provides cheaper, illegal workers, scooping workers up on street corners by the vanload and delivering them to farms. He says he has evidence of falsified Social Security cards [emphasis added] to prove his assertions. And rather than filing a complaint with the federal government, Orian is taking both Munger and J&A to court. (A copy of Orian’s complaint can be downloaded at fearnotlaw.com/gallery/download.php?id=34.)

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who scrupulously follow the law are routinely victimized by competitors who hire cheap, illegal labor - a breach that routinely goes unpunished by the federal government.

Now, tired of waiting for the legislative branch to solve the problem, entrepreneurs are turning to the courts. Their actions have put corner-cutters on notice: Break the immigration laws and you have not only the government to fear, but your fellow business owners as well. David Klehm, Orian’s lawyer, says that his suit is the first of its kind, but experts say it presages a new era.

But it is not only rival companies that are going after outfits that hire illegal immigrants. The Global Horizons case follows a $1.3 million settlement in a Washington State class-action suit involving employees of Zirkle Fruit who sued their employer, claiming that it drove down wages by hiring undocumented workers. That suit was based on federal RICO - or anti-racketeering - laws, and was settled after a federal appeals court overturned a lower court decision to dismiss it.

Employees have also filed an ongoing suit against Mohawk Industries…a carpet manufacturer in Dalton, Ga.

But for Orian, whose case is expected to be decided this spring, the battle is a matter of pride as well as price. He’s an immigrant himself - he arrived from Israel in 1997 - and while he has yet to become an American citizen, he is the proud holder of a green card. His example, he says, proves that immigrants can be successful in business while staying on the right side of the law.

Businesses and the public (as well as workers) want a level playing field.  I guess that’s really the only comment to make on this one.   Be sure to note the reference to the identity theft used as evidence.

Moving along, however, the NYT also had an article about some businesses having a fit about the upcoming DHS rule.  They even try to play the race card by attempting to assert that hispanics will be targeted by the new rules.  That is pure and simple “horse hockey”.  The rule applies to all SSN mismatches (regardless or race or country of origin) - mismatched numbers can not see a person’s color etc.  On the upside, the NYT’s article inadvertently acknowledges the use of stolen SSNs and/or forged documents by illegal immigrants (but fails to note fugitives and criminals do so as well and would be affected):

Experts said the new rules represented a major tightening of the immigration enforcement system, in which employers for decades have paid little attention to notices, known as no-match letters, from the Social Security Administration that workers’ names and numbers did not match the agency’s records.

Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for Social Security, said the agency expected to send out about 140,000 no-match letters to employers this year, covering more than eight million workers. After the rules are announced, the agency is anticipating a surge in requests from employers seeking to clarify workers’ information, he said.

Social Security issues letters only to employers who have more than 10 workers whose numbers do not match, when those workers represent at least one-half of 1 percent of the company’s workforce, Mr. Hinkle said.

Minimum Politics

The Democrat leadership wants to increase the minimum wage by about 40%.

Since the statistical stuff regarding minimum wage (only 2% of US pop is on the wage, typically less than a year, inflationary pressure etc etc) has been talked about quite a bit as of late, I thought I would look at some of the more hypocritical aspects of those making the proposal.

Outsourcing:

One of the left’s continual drumbeats of recent years has been that we’re (more specifically, Bush) outsourcing all our jobs to countries who provide cheap labor.

So raising the minimum wage will miraculously make that go away?

Typically employers hire entry level folks at minimum and soon provide raises for those living up to expectations. Other employers may seek a pool of labor willing to work at minimum wage but account for very high turnover in their business model. With the increased wage, both types of employers have similar choices: cut the labor force, pass costs to the consumer (charge more for their product), and/or outsource to a cheap labor pool (most located in countries with totalitarian governments or the ever compassionate People’s Republic of China).

Illegal Immigration:

The left (and some linguine-spined Republicans) have also argued that by blocking illegal immigration, our grocery costs would skyrocket (the argument was poor - only approximately 2-4% of the cost of produce is from labor).

They seem to have quickly forgotten this very argument while proposing something that would increase costs throughout the entire market, rather than just sectors utilizing illegal immigrant labor.

Additionally, employers looking to outsource for cheap labor may need not look any further than within our own borders. Employers feeling the pinch of raising labor costs but who can not outsource their production to another country, for various reasons, could to turn to ‘undocumented workers’. Should this occur (and it appears likely thanks to the laws of supply and demand) our illegal immigration rates would jump further complicating the issue.

Lastly, at the eleventh hour many House Democrats ‘found religion’ and voted for the border fence (yes, I know it was an election year vote). The new ‘blue dog’ Democrats also, supposedly, hold tougher views on illegal immigration than their leadership (which sets the agenda). I suspect the blue dogs will have a choke chain, and, possibly, a trip to the vet’s for some ‘tutoring’, courtesy of the leadership, if they drift from the agenda. It will be interesting to see if the dogs will dare to bark.

If successful, it is assured that the Demorctat-MSM machine will blame Bush and Republicans for the increased outsourcing, bland employment figures, inflation, and illegal immigration problems which will follow. And the beat goes on…..