A Horsemeat With No Name

During the early 1970s, there was a popular song by the band America called a Horse With No Name.  It was believed to be about heroin use or hallucinations, but maybe not.  The current uproar over horsemeat in the European food supply causes me to think that horsemeat needs a new name.  When you think about the popular meats, beef, pork and lamb, they are not named after the animals they came from.  For some reason horsemeat isn’t called something else like rior or chol.   If it was, then we could easily disassociate this most likely delicious meat with the elegant animals call horse.

The horsemeat scandal is an interesting story.  Horsemeat was intentionally mislabeled as beef, passing through a number of countries and inspection systems, before ending up at big name processors such as Nestle and Birds Eye.  Most recently, the famous IKEA Swedish meatballs were found to contain horsemeat.  I have been to IKEA and have eaten their tasteless meatballs.  Horsemeat, and possibly some black pepper, would help them tremendously.

I have eaten the meat and organs of many animals, and I have always wondered why horse was off limits.  I can see where it may not be an efficient animal to raise solely for meat, but horses are much closer to being livestock than they are to a family pet.  In the early 1970s, beef prices spiked and horsemeat appeared in some stores. I think the popular TV series All in the Family actually addressed it at that time on a show, though my memory may be fuzzy.  Eventually it was banned for consumption, but several years ago, Congress quietly passed legislation allowing U.S. processors to slaughter horses. 

We should eat horse and plenty of it. Diversity of diet makes food more enjoyable. Rather than act shocked they unknowingly sold horsemeat, Nestle should hold a contest to rename the meat to something more marketable.  Nestle could become the horsemeat market kings and sell IKEA all of the horse they can pack into their meatballs, and the meatballs will taste better, causing IKEA to sell more crap furniture, and the economy will improve….    If we eat horsemeat, life will be better.

Why Republican Party Cannot Avoid Extinction

Much has been said and written about the inevitable death of the Republican Party.  Even Republican leaders have warned they will become modern day dinosaurs, unless they change and change quickly.

The problem is that the Republican Party is a fractured group of several political ideologies that can no longer function as one group with common goals.  Libertarians, Tea Partiers, Moderate fundamentalists, etc. all act quite differently from each other, and fail to support the candidates and platform that is ultimately put forth.  Assuming the Republicans will survive is like suggesting the European Union can function with a common currency.  It won’t happen.

We all know the demographic makeup of the party is a detriment.  A party full of old white men does not bode well as whites become a minority in the U.S., males are already a minority and old will never be a majority, but it is probably the best thing the party has right now.  The party’s exclusion of intellectuals, educated women, people of color, non-Christians and many more subgroups, has created a majority for these groups of minorities.  They don’t necessarily have a great deal in common, other than a strong desire to make sure we don’t get another Republican President.  I doubt we ever will again.

After some strategizing, the party has embraced immigration reform to capture Hispanic voters.  Great strategy, but Obama won’t let the Republicans claim it as their own.  Most Latin Americans, with the exception of Cuban Americans, don’t trust the Republicans and will not give them their vote.  As Hispanics become less passive in the election process, the Republicans cannot see much hope for their future.

All organic things eventually die off, and so must the Republicans.  In school we learned how the Republicans replaced the Whigs, which is proof that political parties in the U.S. die.  The Whigs were essentially the founding party of the U.S., but couldn’t come to grips with how to deal with slavery.  While largely opposed to it, they were a fractured, unorganized group of men that didn’t deal with “modern” day problems.  The Republican Party was formed and a few years later Abraham Lincoln was elected the first Republican President, and the rest was history as the saying goes.  Eventually the Democratic Party began representing people like the Republicans, and the Republicans became more exclusive and narrow in their representation; the two parties essentially flipped their ideologies.

The Republicans will continue to have a majority within the House of Representatives, creating difficulty for a Democratic President and Senate to move the country forward.  However, they will never elect a President again, which is amazing since we are only 25 years after Reagan.  A reasonable replacement for this party, that is inclusionary and progressive, would have a real chance to defeat the Democrats.

Immigration Reform Will Boost Economy

We all know the immigration story and how illegal immigrants have been a politically difficult subject.  As a country that achieved unparalleled success because of broadly liberal immigration rules, it has seemed absurd that the U.S. remained stalled on the issue of what to do with the current immigrants that haven’t, or in most cases, are unable to achieve legal status.  Most everyone that has citizenship or legal residency in the U.S. has benefited from previous sensible policies. 

By conservative estimates, there are 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.  There are likely many more.  Almost 80% are Latin Americans and 75% of those are Mexicans. Several years ago I worked with an immigration attorney to help a Mexican employee gain a visa.  She commented that if the employee were Chinese, Russian or Indian, she would have a 10,000 times greater chance of gaining permanent residency, but because she was Mexican, her chances were low.  Our country’s policies and our views as a people towards Mexican immigration, is blatantly racist.   Many times I have been in debates with people that blurt out ridiculous statements such as Mexicans should just do it legally and then we wouldn’t find it so objectionable.  When I explain that our government hands out very few visas to Mexicans, and we make it almost impossible to be legal, my debate foes dismiss me and change the subject.

Mexicans that come to the U.S. to work, want exactly the same thing all other immigrants want.  They want to improve their standard of living and give their children a better life than they had.  These Mexicans want to accomplish that by holding jobs and working hard.  They don’t want handouts, welfare or benefits they haven’t earned.  They would actually like to pay taxes, but often cannot without disclosing their lack of legal status.  In fact they usually pay into the social security system with FICA withholding applied against social security numbers they will never use again.  Because we make it impossible to be legal, Mexican workers will often keep their families in Mexico, sending their wages back home, and treat their jobs as temporary.  If they had legal status and could bring their families to the U.S., imagine the economic stimulation keeping their wages in the U.S. would provide.  These people respect home ownership, family and education.  Having 5 million or more people attempting to become a first time homeowner in the U.S. would be great for the housing market.

We need the Mexican workers and many employers have treated their illegal status as an inconvenience.  While we have a high unemployment rate in the U.S., many employers cannot find an adequate supply of workers.  Why is that?  That is an entirely different discussion. 

Countries with no population growth, and restrictive immigration policies, are facing difficult times.  Norway is one of the wealthiest countries, but cannot find enough workers to fill basic level jobs.  Rather than allow for greater immigration, they choose to suppress their life quality; there are not many restaurants in Norway because of a lack of workers, and Norwegians begrudgingly eat most of their meals at home. No wonder they cuisine doesn’t get any better. Japan’s population is projected to decline from the current level of 128 million people to 86 million in 2060, due to low fertility rates and restrictive immigration.  Japan already has the highest debt levels in the world and the population decline will decimate the country economically. Yet they do nothing to change the inevitable.

The Republicans have recently embraced citizenship for illegal aliens, attempting to take this reform away from Obama.  I’m sure the inevitable collapse of the party has led to discussions about gaining new support from the fastest growing demographic.  Regardless of the motives, I am happy to see real momentum to a problem we have ignored for too long.  The economy is set to grow and what better way to stimulate growth than to provide legal status for this hidden class of hard working people.