Socializing Costs to Maximize Private Profit (In the Name of Compassion, Of Course)

UK news media has observed outrage over Democrat-run Maine town's luxury digs for migrants, which is more than most of our domestic news media have done. The key quotes, from my main point of interest:

Maine State Housing Authority budgeted nearly $3.5 million to cover the rents of 60 migrant families in five buildings in Brunswick for two years. 

They are expected to eventually get permission to work and start earning to pay their own way. 

The state is also allocating $100,000 to help dozens of Brunswick migrants process their asylum applications and secure work permits. 

A bus service is in the works to help the migrants get into town.

In other words, the Maine State Housing Authority and other official bodies are providing a bald-faced example of government picking up the social costs of that cheap labor some businesses love so much, especially those in the construction, agriculture, retail, and hospitality industries. 

California has gone a giant step further and, starting last week, will enroll all undocumented immigrants in Medi-Cal, California's version of the federal Medicaid program for people with low incomes. Even states that haven't taken that step are nevertheless facing financial collapse due to their own mandates to provide emergency room treatment, primary care, dental care, and childbirth to illegal migrants. 

Some state hospital systems, such as Denver's, are now asking for federal government bailouts to rescue them from their own decisions. Or, phrasing it more generously, to share their compassion with taxpayers in all 50 states.  

I suspect that the 22,000 illegal migrants whom Denver reports used its hospital system without charge in the past year just might be employed somewhere or other. Perhaps we might ask those employers to share a bit of that compassion before passing the bill along to the rest of us? 

Say, wasn't there once a great ruckus raised by the populist left over businesses that dumped the social costs of low-wage jobs on to the taxpayer? I believe there was. Socializing costs to maximize private profit was once an issue. For example, this:

“When big companies use the Walmart loophole to force workers on to Medi-Cal, taxpayers pick up the tab,” said California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski. Medi-Cal is the state’s health care program for the poor, elderly and disabled. 

“Today we are putting legislators on notice that it’s time to hold big corporations accountable to pay their fair share for health care like the rest of us.”

That fine statement was issued back in 2013. You could say the same thing today only now the problem is coming from our elected officials instead of Wal-Mart.

 

Aunt Zeituni Gets Another Reprieve

The Boston Herald reports today that Obama’s aunt can stay in the U.S. another year. The Kenyan aunt of the President of the United States - I guess that makes her "KAOPOTUS" - is the country's most famous illegal alien and absconder. She has lived in South Boston public housing projects, unmolested by either state or federal authorities, since a federal immigration judge ordered her to leave the country in 2004.

She had already lived in the U.S. for several years before the law caught up with her. In fact, according to the Boston Herald, she received a U.S. Social Security card in 2001 (whether legally or illegally, I have no idea).

In 2002, she applied for political asylum in the U.S. due to violence in her native Kenya. I don't know what the crime rate is in Kenya, but it must be impressive indeed if KAOPOTUS prefered to continue living in the Old Colony housing development in Southie rather than go back home.

Highlights of the story:

President Barack Obama’s aunt, who has been living illegally in the U.S. for years, can stay in the United States until next year while she awaits a decision on her fight against deportation, according to a spokesman for her attorney.

- snip -

A hearing on an appeal of her deportation was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. today at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, which houses the Boston Immigration Court. The proceedings were closed to the public. Immigration Judge Leonard Shapiro scheduled a second hearing on her case [TSB note: in connection with a previously granted motion to reopen her case to fight the 2004 removal order] for Feb. 4, 2010.

So she can stay in the U.S. for at least one more year, and gets another chance to fight the 2004 deportation order. But hasn't she worn out her welcome in Boston? That city has already provided her with housing and medical services for at least seven years. Wouldn't KAOPOTUS be more comfortable in another public housing project, say, the one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC?