What would happen if the police stopped responding?

I wonder what would happen if Chicago government refused to remove bodies from the streets, under a ‘You made the mess, you clean it up’ policy.

Just leave them. June, July, August... It would get ugly in a day or two, and stay ugly. I know, it’s a sick, dark, fantasy which won’t come about, but just what would happen?

I don’t know what can be done in the short run to reduce the violent crime rate in places like Chicago. Judging from news reports and commentary, as I don’t live in such an area, the politicians who represent those districts seem to believe the major problem is homicidally racist cops who leave home in the morning hoping for an excuse to murder some innocent minorities.

If they really believe that, then they should be calling for the police to stop servicing those area. Just stay out. Let the neighborhoods take care of their own issues. It actually would be an interesting experiment, but I think that in order to have any hope of a positive outcome (at least from a non-criminal perspective) one would have to allow non-criminals to arm themselves.

My guess is that in that scenario, the seriously bad guys wouldn’t last long. I lived in Milwaukee back during the crack wars. There was an interesting incident which kind of fits the scenario, though of course the police did intervene:

A guy complained several times to the police that crack dealers were operating on the sidewalk in front of his house. Broad daylight. Seriously degrading life for decent ie non-criminal people in the neighborhood.

Nothing happened. No arrests, no imprisonments, crack dealers just kept dealing crack in front of his house. For weeks, maybe months. It was a long time ago and I’m fuzzy on that.

So one day the guy decided he had had enough of crack dealers in front of his house and an unresponsive government. He stuck a 12 gauge shotgun out the window and ended that crack dealer’s career.

Then of course the police showed up.

So, suppose they didn’t show up anymore, and all the decent people knew they wouldn’t?

As a moral issue, the government has no legitimate powers which the People have not delegated to it. If the government refuses to exercise those powers in a responsible manner, then the People have a right to take back those powers. So, if government has a legitimate power to protect individuals and neighborhoods from violent criminals, it is only because the people, having that same right, have delegated it to government.

Now, ideally, that would mean going through the peaceful political process, but in real life that process has collapsed in places like Chicago. So, since government has clearly decided they aren’t willing to exercise their powers, maybe the decent people who have to put up with the reality of criminals openly operating could simply take back the powers delegated and do the job themselves.

I have trouble thinking that would be any bloodier or sicker or more immoral than the system we have today in parts of Chicago, Los Angeles, or Baltimore. Right now it looks to me that for practical purposes the government is on the side of the violent criminals. Government disarms all the potential victims but lets the criminals run free in the Disarmed Victim Zones the government created.

How sick a system is that?

Putting An Anti-Undocumented Immigrant Hater In His Place

You apparently don’t understand: the US doesn’t produce enough native-born scofflaws, so we have to import foreign-born scofflaws to make up the shortage.

In order to be sure we aren’t wasting our tax dollars on law-abiding immigrants, we have to be sure we are importing actual scofflaws. The best way to do that is start with people whose very first act, crossing the border, is illegal. That way we know they have the right attitude.

The best kind of scofflaw is one who grew up in a country and culture which understands that rule of law is a scam to prevent dishonest people from getting ahead in life. They get here already understanding that government exists for the purpose of separating the poor from as much of their earnings as possible, and if we lure enough such people into the country with immediate subsidies, they will overwhelm the outdated rule of law attitudes of the local Americans and law-abiding immigrants who bothered to get green cards.

You gotta get with the program or else we will never join the poverty stricken countries which rightfully dominate the world.

Look at California: those people understand the importance of having no respect for the rule of law, and it shows up in the results.

In barely a generation they have gone from an exemplar of law-abiding Western Civilization middle class prosperity right back to noble Third World ultra-stratified poverty stricken masses with a tiny group of stunningly rich on the coast.

You need to understand that we can make the same achievement, but only if we put our minds to it, and repudiate lawful behavior. We need more scofflaws to show us the way. Almost a third of prisoners are Scofflaw-Americans. Well, actually Scofflaw-Hondurans, Scofflaw-Mexicans, Scofflaw-Guatemalans, and so forth. The real shortage today may actually be Scofflaw-Iranians and Scofflaw-Arabs, and people like you with your negative attitudes toward the Constitutional right of hostile foreigners to come here at will is a large part of the problem.

As our revered Senator Mazie Hirono said: “Just shut up.” Learn your place in society. You aren’t here to tell people like Maizie that you are dissatisfied with her policies. Your place is to ‘just shut up’. Or else.

And stop being so hide bound: pay your local legislators a few bucks under the table now and then when you need something done. Just like in Third World countries. Working together, we can do it!

The Dreamers' Legal Problems

Let's do something the politicians on both sides neglect or refuse to do: be clear about who is responsible for the Dreamers' legal problems. Without addressing that issue, we really cannot have an meaningful conversation, and without that, what's the point?

The Dreamers' parents bear one hundred percent of the responsibility for their being here illegally. Their parents knew they were bringing their children here illegally. Their parents knew their children would suffer severe and life long legal consequences, yet their parents brought them here anyway.

Giving the dreamers citizenship, or even legal status rewards their parents' illegal behavior. One gets more of what one rewards. Do we have so few native-born scofflaws that we need to subsidize the importation of yet more?

Change the conversation: Put the onus where it belongs: not on the federal government, but on the parents, and speak of rewarding bad behavior vs not rewarding bad behavior. Giving Dreamers citizenship rewards their parents' bad behavior. Do we want more bad behavior, or less? Should we praise and reward bad behavior, or make people ashamed they treated their own children so shabbily?

Why Should We Give The 'Dreamers' Citizenship?

If you think we should offer citizenship to illegal aliens, even just those who were brought here illegally by their parents, I think you should re-think the long term consequences of rewarding illegal behavior.

Do you think we have so few native born scofflaws in the country that we need to import foreign scofflaws to break our laws?

Should we reward the parents who knowingly broke the law by bringing their children here illegally by giving their children citizenship?

Do you think we should tell the law-abiding citizens and immigrants that they are fools for being law-abiding? Should we tell our children that obeying the law is optional?

Or should we tell the illegals bluntly that those who have legal problems now because their parents brought them illegally have no one but their parents to blame? That is who is responsible for the so-called Dreamers' problems: their parents, and those of you who think that bad behavior deserves to be rewarded.

The children aren't victims of the United States of America: they are victims of their parents' decision to break our laws.

If you think we would be a better country if we threw away the rule of law, and publicly reward law breakers for breaking laws, you go right ahead, but you are the problem, not the solution.

My brother-in-law came here legally, and eventually became a citizen. Are you going to stand up and tell him and the rest of law-abiding America that he was a fool for obeying the law? When you give citizenship to people who broke the law, that is exactly what you are doing, loud and clear.

How long will this be a good country when our legislators publicly announce to the law-abiding -and their children- that obeying the law is for fools?

If We Regulated Guns and Shooters Like Cars and Drivers

I replied to a fellow who thinks we should regulate guns and gun owners like cars and drivers. As in vastly increasing regulation. My response:

I'm in favor of regulating guns, ammo, and accessories like cars and drivers.

If we did, there would be no federal or state license required to manufacture or deal guns or ammo.

A simple written and practical test would get everyone 16 or over a license to operate aka carry in public, and that license would be good in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. No license or permission would be required to acquire a gun, whether one was a licensed user or not, nor would a user's license be required to operate a gun on private property.

One could transport an unloaded gun on public streets without a license, just as one can trailer or tow a car. No registration or fees would be levied on guns as long as they were kept on private property, or transported unloaded on public property.

If ammunition was for use on private property, there would be no excise tax, just as there is none on agricultural use of gasoline.

There would be no taxes or background checks or prohibitions of fully automatic weapons, just as there are none on fully automatic transmissions.

There would be no prohibition of gun types or calibers, just as there are none on engines sizes. There would be no regulation or prohibition of large capacity magazines, as there are none in gas tanks.

There would be no taxes other than standard sales taxes, nor background checks, nor prohibitions of mufflers aka sound suppressors aka silencers.

With a license to carry aka operate in public and a credit card, anyone could walk into a gun rental company and walk out with any gun she pleased and operate that gun in public.

Getting a gun operators license would be a rite of passage for the vast majority of teenagers.

People would need no licenses to make their own guns, even if they planned to sell them.

So yeah: I agree with you. We should regulate guns and gunners like cars and drivers.

18 U.S. Code § 241 - Conspiracy Against Rights

Let's see Donald Trump start vigorously enforcing "18 U.S. Code § 241 - Conspiracy against rights: If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same...

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section...they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/241

Start with the DC City Council and Mayor for their gun control laws. Move on from there.

The Good Old Days of Carrying Guns On Airplanes

Back in the 1960s it was not all that unusual for people going hunting to carry long guns in soft cases right into a plane. Hard cases hardly existed, except for some leather ones, because no one in his right mind would put a gun in checked luggage: too big a chance of damage. While few people could get a permit to carry a handgun in those days, those who had a revolver or pistol in their briefcase would never have been challenged, either, because no one looked. Or cared.

I remember as a kid going through General Mitchell Field in Milwaukee with my Dad and a pair of Browning A-5 semi-auto shotguns in soft cases. After checking in we went up the escalator to the concourse, where a couple very polite gentlemen in grey suits buttonholed us and asked if they could speak to us. Asked when our flight left, looked at our tickets, then sent us on our way with "Have a great hunt!"

We continued through the concourse and onto the plane. The very nice stewardess, knowing they would not fit in the overhead hat racks, took them and put them in the coat closet until we got off at the destination. We then walked off the plane and through the concourse with our shotguns. Repeat on return home, with dead ducks in our luggage.

It turned out that LBJ was coming in an hour or so after our plane departed. No sweat at all, which in retrospect is interesting, given how LBJ happened to be President in the first place.

My guess is that if we went back to that there would be surprisingly few incidents.

8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens

Yes, President Trump DOES have the legal authority to stop people coming in from other countries. Any people, all people, any country, all countries.

That pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
"(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President.
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline."
This is not a new law: It was enacted in 1952. IIRC, Jimmy Carter used pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (f) to prohibit the entry of certain Iranians aka "any class of aliens", and to track down some lranians aka "any class of aliens" already here legally and deport them.

Source

One Law For The Little People, No Law For The Ubermenschen?

I'll be very interested to see what Bill and Hillary Clinton can charge for speeches and books from here on out.

Even more interested to see if they are ghost written by their cell mates.

Many people will say that prosecuting and imprisoning the whole gang would tear the country apart. I agree, but confirming to the law-abiding middle class that the Ubermenchen are just too important to be held to the same standards as the little people would be far, far worse. Prosecution would be highly salutary.

My guess: Obama will pardon them before he leaves office. Maybe a few little people will see some prison time, but the Clintons will retire with scores of millions in crooked gains, proving again that there is one set of laws for the Little People, and no laws for the Ubermenschen.

"I can stop anytime I want" Department

"Eventually, the man told police snorting cocaine in the middle of a traffic stop was perhaps a poor decision."

Hawaii Government At Work

Hawaii Government: It's slow, it's unfocused, it flails about, it eats everything in sight, and it leaves a trail of slime everywhere it goes.

Leftie Attack Bernie Sanders For Insufficient Authoritarianism On Gun Control

Slate's Mark Joseph Stern reveals some of the apparently drug addled attitudes which pass for profound thought amongst gun haters.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders...supported the most odious NRA–backed law in recent memory—one that may block Sandy Hook families from winning a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the gun used to massacre their children....

...As a senator, Sanders supported bills to allow firearms in checked bags on Amtrak trains...

Such utter irresponsibility of a government which allows people of a supposedly free country to put guns in their checked baggage. Just like on planes. Amazing.

Sanders’ vote for a different kind of pro-gun bill is more puzzling—and profoundly disturbing. In 2005, a Republican-dominated Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This law doesn’t protect gun owners; it protects gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers. The PLCAA was the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association for years, because it shields gun makers and dealers from most liability when their firearms are used criminally. It is one of the most noxious pieces of pro-gun legislation ever passed. And Bernie Sanders voted for it.

The Horror! This is like preventing the victims of truck bombings from suing Toyota. "But those trucks are designed specifically for carrying large loads, and it was utterly predictable that someone would fill one with explosives and use it to kill masses of people. Let's bankrupt Toyota."

Before the PLCAA, most states imposed some form of tort liability on gun makers and sellers. If a gun manufacturer made an assault rifle that could slaughter dozens of people in a few seconds, for instance, one of its victims might sue the company for negligently making a gun that could foreseeably be used for mass murder.

Just like that Toyota. Mr. Stern also studiously ignores the demonstrable fact that shooting people is not always a bad thing. Shooting the two jihadi would-be mass murderers in Texas a couple days ago was unequivocally a good thing. Shooting forcible rapists is unequivocally a good thing. There are a lot of people who engage in acts which unequivocally makes them proper targets for shooting.

Perhaps when confronted with murder by someone who dislikes him for his obvious white male privilege, Mr Stern prefers to open a dialog with the gentlemen as they bash his head in. I'd rather just shoot them.

From the comments: "Personal responsibility is a slippery slope. If you start blaming murderers for murders, next thing you know, you will start expecting people to provide their own food, shelter, and clothing. "

Did Boehner Ever Intend To Stop Obama's Amnesty For Illegals?

I doubt it: I think John Boehner's whole patter was a scam from the get-go.

I think Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) got it about right when he said of the Republican leadership's cave to Il Duce Obama on amnesty for lawbreakers:

This isn’t just an action that has passed through this body that I disagree with. This is an unlawful, unconstitutional order given by the President of the United States to his administration. This action deliberately sabotages our laws, allowing individuals who Congress has expressly mandated be expelled from our nation to stay, to live as citizens, and to hold jobs.

We don't have enough scofflaws in the US: We must attract more from other countries. Law abiding, low-skilled and unskilled American workers make too much money: We must undercut their earning power by bringing in more unskilled scofflaws.

Federal Ban On Interstate Transfers Of Firearms Unconstitutional

This may well be appealed, but if it stands, it will be a meaningful improvement for would-be handgun buyers. United States District Judge Reed O'Connor ( Northern District Of Texas, Fort Worth Division) has struck down the federal ban of transfers of handguns by Federal Firearms License holders to out of state residents, under both the 2nd Amendment and the 5th Amendment:

the Court concludes that Defendants have not shown that the federal interstate handgun transfer ban is narrowly tailored to be the least restrictive means of achieving the Government’s goals under current law. The federal interstate handgun transfer ban is therefore unconstitutional on its face.

The Court further finds, in the alternative, the federal interstate handgun transfer ban is unconstitutional when applied to the facts of this case....

... the Court finds that the federal interstate handgun transfer ban also violates the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution...

...Accordingly, the Court DECLARES that 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(3), 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(3), and 27 C.F.R. § 478.99(a) are UNCONSTITUTIONAL, and Defendants are ENJOINED from enforcing these provisions.

The 28 page PDF is here. As a practical matter, this will increase competition in states like Hawaii which have few gun dealers, and dramatically cut transfer costs for those who might want to buy a handgun while traveling in another state.

Obama’s Historical Legacy

Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, one of 53 historians interviewed by the New York Magazine:

what...will matter...to future historians? The manner of Obamacare’s passage told the story—a party-line vote, reeking of special-interest side deals, on an unpopular, indigestible, multi-thousand-page love letter to bureaucracy, crudely packaged as a reconciliation bill to avoid filibuster, and falsely sold, in read-my-lips promises that would come back to haunt Obama, as the most conservative possible approach to health-care reform. This was liberalism à outrance—its last desperate surge to win at any cost what it could no longer even imagine winning honestly and on the merits.

Hawaii, New York, & Wisconsin Prohibit Employment Discrimination Against Criminals

James Jacobs, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, Washington Post:

Hawaii, New York, and Wisconsin make employment discrimination against ex-offenders (CBED) unlawful, unless an employer can show that successful performance of the job would be jeopardized by a person with a propensity for the kind of crime for which the job seeker had previously been convicted.

These are all bad laws.

Here's why.

Apropos Absolutely Nothing

The 1850 trial of Harvard Professor Dr. John Webster for the murder of Dr. George Parkman apparently entertained...I mean shocked, shocked the nation.

I draw two conclusions from this: Never lend large amounts of money to a professor, especially one from Harvard, and two, if you are going to kill a creditor, make darn sure you thoroughly dispose of the corpse. Webster's laxity in this is really rather shocking for a man of science. I mean really now: If one is going to dismember and immolate part of the body, get on with it. Don't dawdle: do the entire thing NOW. Don't leave bits and pieces lying around to be seen by just anyone who pokes a hole in the five course thick brick wall of your laboratory and sticks his head in. Such sloppy technique alone should have sent Webster to the gallows.

N.B.: You have to keep returning to the "Additional Topics" on the first page to read the whole sorry tale of professorial incompetence.

Why Americans Have Weapons Instead of Guns

I just read a review of a new variant of the AR-15 rifle, which was designed to be legal in all fifty states. It sounds like an interesting response to a bewildering thicket of state level regulations, all of which I believe are prohibited by the Constitution. Big deal: my opinion won't change things.

One of the commentors objected to another's use of the term 'weapon' rather than calling it a gun.

My response:

"should NEVER ever be referred to as weapons(.) they are guns or firearms(,) weapons are what police and military use....we cause problems on ourselves by referring to our gun as weapons"

You have a legitimate point, but I do disagree with it.

My guns are weapons. Every last one of them, from a Belgian Browning 20 gauge A-5, through a Remington pump .22 Model 12A to Mini14s and S&W J-frames, and 1911s.

The Constitution protects arms. Not goose guns, not air rifles, not deer guns, not target pistols, except at they contribute to use and familiarity with military grade weapons or can substitute for them. The Constitution protects militia grade arms precisely for the purpose of killing people. That is demonstrated without any doubt by the 2nd Amendment's explicit tying of the right to keep and bear arms to a well trained militia. The writings of the Founders, published concurrently with the ratification debates and available today, make explicit the role of arms which are protected: they are explicitly for killing tyrants, foreign or domestic.

Anti-gunners freak at the idea, especially at the 'domestic' aspects as they inaccurately associate 'tyrants' with 'politicians', but weapons ownership, use, and the bearing of them should not be controversial in an age where domestic terrorists and ordinary criminals alike can strike anywhere, any time, and the police are incapable of being everywhere, all the time, to protect us.

That it is controversial is in part our fault: For decades we let the anti-gunners frame the debate. It is time to frame that debate ourselves, and force them to respond to us instead of us to them. We can do so only by using terms like 'weapons' and 'shooting people who need shooting right now', and defending those concepts as good and proper. If more people than the LEO at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris had been armed, more might well have survived: Killing murderous assailants is exactly what weapons are for, and that is a good thing. If the observer who videod the killing of the Paris LEO on the sidewalk had had a Mini-14 or AKM at hand instead of a video camera, the LEO might well have been killed anyway, but the murderers might have been stopped right there. They are exactly the kind of domestic tyrants the unorganized militia has a chance of stopping. By shooting them with weapons.

The 2nd Amendment protects 'arms', not just guns, but arms, for the purpose of arming the militia, including the 'unorganized militia', which means us: civilians such as those brave passengers aboard United Flight 93, who gave their lives defending us against the Islamists on 9-11. That means that not only are guns protected, but so are all other militia usable weapons: knives, including bowies, bayonets, and switchblades, cudgels, including billy clubs, and metal or plastic knuckles. Laws prohibiting them are explicitly prohibited by the Constitution. That such laws exist and are widespread today is only evidence of our refusal to submit to the Constitution. Rather than submit, even by amending it, we have preferred to pretend that it does not mean what it clearly says. That is our shame.

The Constitution protects weapons which carry a single round, like the Liberator .45 of the Second World War, and it protects AKMs, AR-15s, and M-16s and their 20 & 30 round magazines. It protects sniper rifles and target rifles which may be used by the unorganized militia as sniper rifles. It protects submachine guns and full auto rifles ie actual assault rifles. The Constitution protects all of them for the explicit purpose of shooting those who would do us and our country harm.

Given that a number of the Founders owned ships with cannons, and given that the Constitution explicitly provides for issuing letters of marque and reprisal to privately owned ships, I expect that a plausible argument could be made that the Constitution also protects crew served weapons such as belt fed machine guns and at least light artillery.

We are on firm ground when we say that the Constitution protects military grade arms, and great big scary ones at that. If we refuse to make that point, the other side is on the way to victory.

Instead of allowing the anti-weapons crowd to cow us into refusing to defend weapons ownership, I prefer to make them confront our issue head on: The purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect our ability to arm ourselves against tyrants, foreign and domestic. Those tyrants may be common criminals or politically/religiously inspired criminals such as disciples of al Qaeda, ISIS/ISIL, AQAP, and others. In any case, when they strike, the police are almost sure not to be there. The victims are always there, and only armed victims, willing to shoot them with weapons they bear, are capable of shooting people who desperately need to be shot.

The original article, "50 STATE LEGAL AR-15 – ARES DEFENSE SCR" by Sam Trisler in'Guns America', is here.

Reading Proficiency Rates At Milwaukee Public Schools

Pretty impressive:

Five schools, for example, had not a single pupil score proficient in reading on the state tests, which are administered to students in third through eighth grades, and once in high school, in 10th grade. The state assigned those schools a 0 percent score.
On the other end of the scale, the best reading proficiency score at an 80/80 school was 21 percent at Hartford Avenue University School in MPS. Second (20 percent) was Franklin School, also in MPS. St. Marcus Lutheran was third (19 percent).

Hmmmm....Can't blame underpaid teachers: Milwaukee's teachers' salaries, adjusted for cost of living, are the highest in America. (Hawaii's are the lowest)

Something else is going on. Maybe lousy parents?

It seems to me that the simplest way to improve school outcomes, and reduce violence at the same time, would be to stop subsidizing bastardy, but I guess that would be racist. You get more of whatever you subsidize, though. You want more messed up kids? Subsidize unwed teen 'parenthood'.

Obama’s Executive Order On Immigration

Interesting position by Ilya Somin, a fairly libertarian prof.

My thoughts:

Anything we do to reward illegals, including creating paths to citizenship for their children brought here as children, rewards illegal behavior. This is inherently a bad thing because it makes fools of those who accept the social compact that we obey laws even when we disagree with them, and if we feel strongly enough about them, we work to change them. Until we are successful, though, we obey them. Rewarding people for breaking the law teaches the rest of us that obeying the law is for fools, and that will have very bad consequences when the masses understand that it the new American paradigm. We don't need millions more people who think the purpose of government is corruption: We have plenty such home grown already.

Rewarding illegal behavior produces more illegal behavior.

We have enough scofflaws without importing more.

We have enough unskilled laborers to drive down wages for the unskilled, and legalizing more only drives down wages of American unskilled workers.

Just because illegals want to escape crappy, statist, corrupt, poverty stricken countries does not impose any obligation on us to accept them.

I sympathize with the plight of adults who were brought here as children, and now culturally identify as Americans. Their plight though is not out fault: It is their parents' fault. Let's not kid ourselves about that: They are illegal aliens because their parent's broke the law. While legalizing those once-children's presence might be a reasonable compromise, they should never be allowed to become citizens: That would further reward their parents' illegal actions.

A country which refuses to defend its border is no country at all. I have no interest in watching the United States turn itself into Mexico or Guatemala, because they are crappy, statist, corrupt, poverty stricken countries far worse than ours.

None of the above matters in the least bit, because we are on our merry way anyway no matter what I think.