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Tuesday, June 08, 2004:
ANOTHER REAGAN EULOGY
Peter Brimelow with some intelligent remarks on Reagan's legacy:
" We will be hearing endlessly about his congeniality, optimism, funniness etc. I say bunk to this.
Reagan was a ferocious conservative ideologue in the 1960s at a time when it meant upsetting people who were comfortable with the conventional liberalism (and they got really upset). And also when it meant being pessimistic about things like the intentions of the Soviet Union and the efficacy of price controls, about which everyone desperately, and hysterically, wanted to believe the best."
Monday, June 07, 2004:
ROUND 'EM UP AND SHIP 'EM OUT
The Berkeley Daily Planet runs this human interest piece about the "plight" of illegal immigrants working as day laborers in Berkeley.
Castillo is one of a growing number of day laborers (called jornaleros in Spanish)—mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many undocumented—who seek work each day on Hearst Avenue in West Berkeley. Faced with declining job opportunities, low wages, and frequent abuse by unscrupulous employers, they struggle to survive on the margins of the economy.
That is, illegal immigrants.
He earns $10-$15 per hour for carpentry work, painting, landscaping or digging trenches for foundations.
That is pretty good pay, folks. All that talk about "jobs Americans don't want to take" and "work for less than Americans are willing to" is garbage, ladies and gentlemen. $15 per hour -- tax-free, no less -- is an astounding sum for unskilled labor.
With help from the Multicultural Institute, the jornaleros have attempted to establish an unofficial minimum wage rate of $10 for their work, but so far have had little success. The contractors usually start out offering $7 or $8 per hour, and there is no way to prevent other jornaleros from accepting the lower wage if they are hungry enough, says Sergio Granados, a 22-year old Guatemalan. “We have tried to convince them not to work for less than $10, but some of them just don’t understand,” he said.
Now the illegals are trying to unionize? Wonders never cease.
“We just want to be equal, to be treated like everyone else.”
Then go home, get your papers in order, and then come back.
If the presence of illegal immigrants making high wages, tax-free and taking away Americans' jobs in the midst of a recession is so well known as to make the newspaper, why has the INS not struck yet?
I demand that the INS come and deport these illegal workers immediately, to enforce federal law, protect national security, and promote the economic interests of Americans.
Sunday, June 06, 2004:
USELESS
SACRAMENTO - Ronald Reagan never had much use for Berkeley.
To the Republican governor, it was filled with "weirdos and misfits," a haven for ungrateful kids spoiled by a permissive society that had provided them everything and demanded little in return.
Glad to see not much has changed.
He once said a student protester "had a haircut like Tarzan, walked like Jane and smelled like Cheetah." Reagan believed he -- as governor and automatic member of the University of California Board of Regents -- was the person to bring a crackdown.
To UC Berkeley and much of the city around it, Reagan was a knuckle-dragging primitive who had not the slightest conception of the role of a great university.
"He showed a tremendous amount of contempt for the students and faculty," said John A. Douglass, a senior research fellow at the university's Center for Studies in Higher Education.
In turn, among higher education folks, "Reagan-hating was pretty common," Douglass said.
And it still is, you fucking creep. I wouldn't call you a fucking creep if you weren't training Yvette Falarca for a revolution, comrade.
PISSANT, DEFINED
From the SacBee:
Schwarzenegger said he had such respect for Reagan that he campaigned for him even before becoming an American citizen. The Republican governor later issued a statement saying he had canceled a planned trip to Las Vegas on Monday because of Reagan's death.
Too bad his actions (like cutting state government to a minimum, like Reagan did) don't reflect his admiration, as it is purely superficial. Don't come to Vegas, Ah-nold, we don't want you here.
Saturday, June 05, 2004:
The old order changeth, yielding place to new
Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere,
“Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?
For now I see the true old times are dead,
When every morning brought a noble chance,
And every chance brought out a noble knight.
Such times have been not since the light that led
The holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole ROUND TABLE is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world;
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”
And slowly answer’d Arthur from the barge:
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.
But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seëst—if indeed I go—
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow’d happy, fair with orchard-lawns
And bowery hollows crown’d with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.”
From Morte d’Arthur. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1911-2004
RIP Former President Ronald Reagan.
Friday, June 04, 2004:
Negative Action
Those affirmative action supporters really screwed up. Why doesn't affirmative action sell? Well, if you're taught all throughout elementary and high school about how awful it was that black people faced discrimination since whites got special preferences just because they're white, it's really hard to turn around and say "Let's give special preferences to a different color."
The overall argument for affirmative action is much more complicated and based on the various philosophies of a bunch of corpses, but once you set that anti-preference roadblock up in folks' minds, not even a thousand dead guys couldn't drag you over it.
Oops? Whose idea was it to start teaching civil rights through the example of anti-black discrimination? Conservatives are too busy trying to destroy the public school system to do it, after all.
ANOTHER QUOTE OF THE DAY
From Tomasso:
PB is a racist and an idiot and anyone who blogs with him is helping legitamize his ideas. Even if you don't agree with him (which, since you have never explained your opinion on the matter we can't tell) your presence implicitly legitamizes his views as being within the realm of acceptable discourse.
See what happens when you stand up for your country? Pure ad hominem. It's shameful
Thursday, June 03, 2004:
California Lawmakers Again Show Wanton Disregard For the Will of the People.
This isn't surprising, of course. The California Assembly is considering a bill that would allow universities to consider race, gender, etc. in university admissions.
Maria Blanco, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, sponsored the bill saying:
"What the U.S. Supreme Court said was that as long as you don't make preferences you can use race...Universities feel cornered by Prop. 209. We sponsored the bill to make it clear that it was lawful."
Awww. Poor Universities. Their arms are just twisted by those damned taxpayers who subsidize public education.
Well, Maria, you're the lawyer, but what I thought the Supreme Court said was that the United States Constitution "does not prohibit the law school's narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." Sorry, Maria, but Prop 209 stands as the will of the people. And even the Supreme Court hasn't as of yet overthrown it.
But no fear! This bill has opponents. The Daily Cal points out that "Opponents of the bill say there is no need to look at race and other factors to promote diversity in the higher education system. They said the current comprehensive system is enough to promote a diverse student body."
Oh. Well, I am glad that there are multi-culturalists to oppose the multi-culturalists. Far be it from anyone to suggest that diversity ought not to be the goal of an institution of higher learning.
Virtual Politics
The blogosphere was the first great fusion of technology and politics. Meet the second generation.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004:
THE EVIDENCE OF INSTITUTIONALIZED SEXISM AND RACISM AT CAL
I haven't been paying much attention to policy lately. I failed to notice that this year's matrix has changed very little since last year with regard to men. However, the minority placement goals have remarkably been toned down. Perhaps it was that lawsuit I drafted that scared them a little. Anyway, eat these numbers up as a new policy will be formulated in some Orwellian fashion (funny how "non-discrimination" entails classifying people in a pentagonal racial typology scheme, which is of course, making discriminations, HA!):
A placement goal of 90.8% women in nursing positions. That's diversity for ya!
A placement goal of 75.5% women in library assistant positions (I especially love the librarian at Boalt: she can't even speak english properly and sounds like she just learned it recently);
A placement goal of 86-88% for all levels of clerical admin. support must be wymmyns also;
A placement goals for skilled craft workers stands at an astounding 44% for minorities.
You have testicles and a lack of melanin and you can't find a job on campus? This is the reason why.
BOALT HALL CONTROVERSY
No, this not about Prof. Yoo, god bless him. But I was cleaning out my mailbox recently, and someone forwarded this e-mail from La Raza de Boalt to me:
Raza,
This afternoon we met with Dean Berring about the racist comments made by the
guest lecturer in Prof. McGovern's class.
Dean Berring was very receptive and has agreed to the following:
(1) McGovern will not be asked back to Boalt
(2) New language prohibiting statements of this kind is currently being
drafted by the two minority students who were in the classroom at the time the
comments were made. This language will be put into the official
guidelines/policy for adjuncts and visiting lecturers.
(3) Berring will send an all student email either Monday/Tuesday to the entire
student body explaining that this incident occurred, that the administration
is actively investigating the issue and that Boalt does not condone nor allow
statements of this kind.
(4) Berring will tell Dean Edley of what transpired so he is aware of the
situation/institutional history. That way if this needs to be addressed in the
fall he will be up to date on the issue.
As a final note Berring was also very upset about the episode and was
extremely helpful in resolving this issue.
Allowing students to draft the rules for professors flies right in the face of academic freedom, not that Prof. Berring ever cared about such things. You can expect more of this stupidity when Dean Epley (hired solely because of his skin color and his rigid ideology) takes over next year. Apparently, some students were also circulating private, confidential information about the professor as well.
If anyone out there knows what was said, I would love to hear about it. I always find it ironic when the brown KKK (La Raza) alleges charges or "racism," but I would like to see if there is any merit to what happened in late April, and how the purge of McGovern took place.
Monday, May 31, 2004:
ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE WAR AGAINST COLONIZATION: RANCH RESCUE
I have been applauding the efforts of the Barnett brothers in raising public awareness as to the problem along the border. But an even greater problem is when these people try and protect their property rights, or even our country, and our own government prosecutes them. Yes, I am one of those people outraged by the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents.
But the legality of such activity (it's not vigilante-ism when it's on private property) has always been uncertain in the face of a world where you cannot stand up for your country. Not at school, not at work, and ceratinly not out on the front lines. The sheriff of Cochise County put it this way:
Such measures are legal, said Carol Capas, a spokeswoman for the Cochise County Sheriff's Department, where Douglas is located.
"The sheriff's stance is, as long as they remain within the limits of Arizona law, they're treated like everybody else," said Capas of the militia groups. "If they're firing their weapons to create an endangerment situation .. . or if they physically hold (the immigrants) or point a gun at them, (that's illegal)."
In other words, you can't make a citizen's arrest on someone who is trespassing on your property in Cochise County. I wonder how this policy statement fares for the criminal offense in the second degree of trespass in Arizona? Seems to me if you have someone committing second-degree trespass on your property, you should be able to hold them. Alas, this is not the case, as you will be prosecuted, gringo.
BRITISH MUSLIMS FEEL EXCLUDED. GEE, I WONDER WHY...
A newly released report by the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia [sic] warns that, should efforts to integrate young Muslim males fail, Britain can expect race riots. The Guardian editorializes that this is because anti-Islamic sentiment has become "institutionalized" in British society, quoting a raft of statistics suggesting that Muslims are treated differently than everyone else.
Could it be that the British public is right to cast a skeptical eye on its Muslim population? The Guardian's facile view is that anti-Muslim sentiment is somehow a product of Britain's participation in the War on Terror. The trends identified by the report, however, were well in place prior to 9-11. Thus:
There were already radical clerics advocating the forcible conversion of Britain's host population.
There had already been one-sided Muslim race riots aimed at whites and the police.
Muslim youths were already involved in a mongrel sub-culture that mixed the worst elements of Islam with the worst of England.
The War on Terror may have exacerbated inter-community tensions but the tensions were already there. And Muslims, the unmeltable ethnics of Europe, bear more than a little responsibility for this.
Sunday, May 30, 2004:
ANOTHER GOLDWATER MOMENT?
Pat Buchanan thinks so:
" In the aftermath of 9-11, Bush stood at 90 percent approval. His hold on his party blanketed rising opposition among the rank-and-file to his policies. Now, with Iraq reaching quagmire status and Bush's approval falling to where it is possible he does not survive November, long-suppressed dissent has begun to break through.
We may be at the beginning of another Goldwater moment in the Grand Old Party, like 1960, when the grassroots began to rumble and rise in rebellion, and reject Eisenhower Republicanism while still liking Ike.
What are the issues that can sunder the party in a Bush second term or in a post-Bush era? Immigration is the most explosive, as is seen in the stunning recoil to Bush's amnesty early this year and the hasty abandonment of the plan by the White House. A crunch is coming as Bush, Rove and the moderate Republicans are still determined to push ahead with amnesty, to compete with Democrats for the growing Hispanic vote. This could tear the party apart nationally, as it has already begun to do in Arizona and Utah."
THE ART OF "PUFF PIECE" JOURNALISM
Can be found here.
Nowhere in this article does it ask the question why have black admissions dropped so much. Could it be that the schools are failing to teach these children the basics instead of localized truths? Is Dan Siegel to blame?
No, this article ask questions like...
Does it matter if the black presence at Berkeley is dwindling?
Yes, says Toff Peabody, a Berkeley molecular biology major, who was so struck by the new Berkeley numbers he joined a loosely organized group this spring that has been campaigning for a more diverse campus under the banner, "White Males for Diversity."
Berkeley has its fair share of idiots, but "White Males for Diversity?" Isn't that going a little too far, given whites are underrepresented in the campus community?
RINO FINALLY ADMITS HE IS A CENTRIST
From the SacBee:
"I think in general, when I go through the issues, I'm amazed of how much I am to the center, I would say, with the programs and with where government should be and all this rather than to the right."
The party establishment should be overthrown at once for feeding us this piece of crap. I'm glad Ah-nold decided to tell us this AFTER he was elected. Not revealing your true philosophy is dishonest, like every other politician is in Sacramento. Arnold cannot distinguish himself from the other vermin.
I'm still praying for California to become insolvent, so the out-of-control social programs will finally be axed from the budget once and for all. Once there are no businesses and wage earners (versus those people who use social programs), there won't be any money left to pay for anything.
Saturday, May 29, 2004:
REAL AMERICAN HEROES: HAROLD JOHNSON
From the Pacific Legal Foudation:
DEFENDING THE SPIRIT OF BROWN IN BERKELEY
By Harold Johnson, PLF attorney
What does Berkeley in 2004 have in common with Topeka, Kansas, in 1954? A fixation with the skin color of public school students.
There's a big difference, of course. Topeka's obsession with race was mean-spirited, while Berkeley's is well-meaning. Topeka's policy -- struck down by Brown v. Board of Education, the antisegregation ruling that marks its 50th anniversary on May 17 -- kept the races apart. Black students were restricted to certain schools, while white students went to other schools. Things were separate -- and unequal.
In contrast, when the Berkeley Unified School District uses skin color to match students with schools, it does so to get a mixture of black, Latino, and white kids in classrooms.
Even when guided by good intentions, however, categorizing kids by color is dangerous. It accents skin-deep differences. It reinforces stereotypes that say ethnicity is destiny. It provides precedent, available for use by those with less laudable goals, for using color to distinguish -- and to discriminate.
One more thing: In California, it happens to be illegal. Eight years ago, voters added Proposition 209 to the California Constitution, outlawing race- and sex-based bias in public education, contracting, and hiring. Sponsors rightly billed it as a follow-up to Brown and other milestone civil rights decisions, because it says no one should be treated less equally than another because of skin color or sex.
Lorenzo Avila, a Berkeley parent, objects to the way Berkeley has been shutting its eyes to Prop. 209's requirement to be colorblind. Last year, represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, he brought a lawsuit against the district's student-assignment policy. The case will be one for the history books.
District officials have already retreated a bit and downgraded the role of race in planning for the next school year. But they seem poised to return to a color-based calculus. In fighting the Avila/PLF lawsuit, they're stubbornly arguing that race can be used to say where kids can go to school -- and they're defending their original scheme with no apologies.
"Controlled choice" was the scheme's Orwellian title. The aim was to balance each school's racial makeup to within 5% of the overall district population. So, while parents could suggest where they'd like their child to be enrolled, their "choice" would go out the window if the student's color didn't fit the desired racial mix for that school.
Berkeley's schools suffer from chronic budget woes. Yet officials see no extravagance in devoting thousands of clerical hours to counting students by color and calibrating racial targets for each school. By forcing some students to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods, the district's race-balance fixation has made kids "hostages to bus schedules" and robbed time from after-school activities, as a former Berkeley PTA council president recently complained to school officials.
Last month, an Alameda County Superior Court sided with the district against Avila. Because race isn't the only factor in "controlled choice" -- space availability and the child's socioeconomic background also count -- the scheme doesn't flout Prop. 209, Judge James Richman ruled.
That reasoning doesn't bear inspection. When assignment can be conditioned on skin color, the fact that other considerations might play a part doesn't sanitize things.
Just as dubiously, the judge seized on a new statute, authored by Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally (D-Carson), and signed last year by Gov. Gray Davis, that plays games with Prop. 209's wording. Prop. 209 says government "shall not discriminate.'' The meaning is clear. As the state Supreme Court has said, to "discriminate" is "to show partiality (in favor of) or prejudice (against)" -- just what Berkeley does when it turns students away from the school of their choice for racial reasons.
But the Dymally law gives the word a new spin -- taking a cue from a United Nations treaty on discrimination. According to this new, "improved" definition, it's not necessarily discrimination to treat people differently by color, when the objective is "advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups."
Besides the fact it would let government play favorites by race, the Dymally law has a problem: A statute can't amend the state constitution, or change the meaning of its words. Hence, Dymally's definitional distortion is the target of a lawsuit by Prop. 209 sponsor Ward Connerly (who is represented by PLF).
The bottom line for Avila's case: His setback in Superior Court will probably be short-lived. Judge Richman gave Avila's attorneys "something easy to shoot at" on appeal, Professor David Levine of UC San Francisco's law school told an interviewer. The judge's decision "strained" not "to follow [the] precedent" of other cases that have applied Prop. 209, said Levine. "I don't think it's very convincing."
Lorenzo Avila believes it's wrong to teach students that color, not character, is their defining attribute. He wants Berkeley schools to focus on academics, not social engineering that treats kids like chips on a checkerboard.
In other words, his lawsuit is animated by classic civil-rights concerns, by the letter of Prop. 209 -- and by the spirit of Brown.
Just another example of the tyranny of the left and its total disregard for the California Constitution. How sad.
JONP GETS IT WRONG AND OTHER THINGS I'VE NOTICED
In the first place, I've noticed that Progcal's Jon Pennington has resurfaced. Turns out that he had never disappeared at all but was trolling around all along.
Some time ago, I posted portions of Tom McClintock's recent statement on AB540, which extends instate tuition breaks to illegals. McClintock writes:
" Two immigrants are accepted to the California State University. One has obeyed every immigration law to come here legally. He files for the appropriate visas, he runs the gauntlet of the application process and he meets every requirement for legal status in the United States. The other has broken every immigration law for the last three years and is in the United States illegally. The only difference is this: the legal immigrant will be charged $12,946 per year to attend California State University, while the illegal immigrant will pay $2,776."
In the same piece, McClintock claims that around 7500 illegals benefitted from the educational subsidy this year alone. Jon, a loyal reader despite himself, is unhappy with these figures, and cites a blog that cites an LA Times article that claims that "the numbers floating around were in the hundreds, not thousands."
Maybe, maybe not. In any case, I have no intention of getting drawn into this numbers dispute. For two reasons: First, Jon P has proven himself an ungrateful interlocutor, provoking a debate on immigration restriction and then vanishing into thin air once I gave him all the material he needed to start thinking correctly about the issue. Second, Jon badly misses the point of my post (again). I am unhappy, Jon, with the principle of AB540 and would be so even if it could be shown that, in practice, no illegals benefit from it. You see, I believe that, for the purposes of public education and much else, illegals should occupy a much lower status than legal out-of-state residents and it bothers me that state legislators seem to think otherwise. From this perspective, the question of whether 700 illegals enjoy tuition breaks or rather 7000 makes absolutely no difference. If you want to talk about the principle of the thing, please do: I'm still wondering what could possibly motivate support for such a program.
The second thing I noticed was Jonp's sustained attack on Boalt prof and Bush administration advisor John Yoo. Amongst other silliness -- no, Jon, Professor Yoo is not responsible for Abu Ghraib and the thugs at Boalt should grow up -- Jon makes merry with Yoo's name, heading his posts with clever titles like "Yoo know that I'm not innocent", "Do Yoo read me?", "Yoo want it, Yoo got it", etc.
I don't know about yoo, but I'm beginning to worry about Jon's anti-racist credentials...
Finally, two notes: now under new management, Calstuff has decided to link to us, which is nice of them but would be nicer (probably) if they didn't describe us as "hard right". It's to be preferred over "far right", of course, but it seems a little unjust when the kooks at Progcal get away with "lefty". In any case, we prefer to call ourselves "conservatives". Also, we have made the Bear Flag League headline roll. Thanks to Justene at Calblog and a warm welcome to all BFLers passing this way...
Friday, May 28, 2004:
NYT SMEARS HUNTINGTON (AGAIN)
Samuel Huntington's new book, Who Are We: The Challenges to American National Identity, was widely reviewed in the press prior to its release this month. A dubious honor, as it turns out. Huntington's critics, already outraged by his unapologetic discussion, in the March number of Foreign Policy, of Mexican immigration and America's historic, Anglo-Protestant culture, were intent on doing their worst. Foremost amongst these was Carlos Fuentes, a Mexican novelist and sometimes politician better known for his intemperate views on American imperialism than his (decidedly mediocre) contribution to world literature. In a widely republished review, Fuentes grossly misrepresented the book's contents in order to better cry "racism". Fuentes was soon followed on the attack by the New York Times' Deborah Solomon, whose immensely disrespectful interview with Huntington seemed to have no other point than the promotion of public misperception.
The book is now out but that hasn't changed the critics' views nor, apparently, persuaded them to read it. In an oddly insubstantial review for today's NYT (" An Identity Crisis for Norman Rockwell America"), for example, Michiko Kakutani derides the book as " crotchety, overstuffed and highly polemical" (read: unhip, complicated and politically disagreeable]. Huntington's arguments are too "neat" [whatever that means], his concerns objectionably reminiscent of the 1980's and 90's "when debates about multiculturalism and core curriculums were all the rage" [so passe!], and certain of his arguments confusing to readers who do not wish to engage with them [particularly stumping for Michiko is the idea that nationalism could be "alive and well in most of the world" and "in crisis" elsewhere]. What Michiko fails to do -- a surprising failure for one who seems to violently disagree with the thesis of an evidence-rich ("overstuffed") book -- is produce a single empirical or analytical criticism. And this is as it should be: for the Left, immigration remains, as ever, ultimately a question of taste. Huntington, like Norman Rockwell, just doesn't have any.
Verdict: I always knew that Michiko Kakutani had only been hired for her name.
[ my review is very shortly forthcoming...]
OLD HIPPIE REIGNS SUPREME IN SACRAMENTO
You can see examples of conservative behavior within the Democratic party itself:
Burton to stay through elections
Senate Democrats have decided to delay choosing their next leader until late August and to keep their current leader, John Burton, in office through the elections. In a letter signed by 20 members of the caucus, senators committed to choosing Burton's successor on Aug. 24 in a closed caucus, and taking that decision to a vote in the full Senate two days later. Burton, the letter says, should serve until Nov. 15. The calendar is seen by some as a setback for Sen. Martha Escutia, who had been pushing for an earlier decision. Her chief rival for the pro tem job is Sen. Don Perata. In any case, the letter is a sign that most Senate Democrats believe Burton would be better than either of his aspiring successors at steering the caucus through the budget negotiations and the upcoming elections.
The old hippie keeps an old-school-rabid-reconquista Marta from taking over as leader. All of those "leadership" conferences were for naught. Is this racial-discrimination (strict scrutiny), or even worse, gender-discrimination (intermediate scrutiny)? Did she fail to give Burton "quid pro quo" for that position of leadership?
Does it create a "hostile work-environment?" Who could keep a latina from taking over, like Evita Peron, or Frida Kahlo or Our Lady of Guadalupe? Who could stop the reconquista? Why it's John Burton...
I smell conservative, old guard conservation: Burton's power over the legislature, appealing to all of the organized leftist causes that unify the party with an almost singular truth: wait til the old die off, and we will replace them.
That's why Martha is just going to have to wait before she can become Evita Peron, and elicit her edicts from a balcony.
THIS IS FOR THE REPUBLICANS WHO VOTED FOR AHNOLD
It hasn't happened yet, but you can be assured it is inevitable. The Mexican colonization of California will proceed unabated. Goodbye American sovranty.
I honestly thought the GOP stood for something, but I have been wrong before.
Thursday, May 27, 2004:
Why San Francisco sucks part... i+1?
I'm sitting here in New England at the moment, enjoying the interesting weather. David's quite right about San Francisco weather... it's amazingly boring.
Two days ago, I mowed my parents' lawn. (That's right, there's privately owned grass up here) Later that day, it rained. RAINED! With lightning and everything. For those of you in San Francisco, you may need to look up "lightning" in a dictionary. Suffice it to say that lightning is super-cool. It looks cool, it can be loud, and it burns down New Mexico.
But there isn't much lightning in the Bay area. When there is, the crazies at People's Park scream wildly like it's the end of the world, and then scream even louder when the thunder rolls by.
But I am a nature-lover. This may seem to be somewhat at odds with my plans to destroy the environment, but I assure you it is not. Nothing is more relaxing than sitting out under the trees, listening to the birds and the leaves, feeling ants crawl up your pants. The pitter patter of rain on the ground, on the roofs, on your face... it's a beautiful sound. The lightning rips the boring sky apart with its beauty.
Oh, but San Franciscans love their "Californian weather." Lunatics.
AT LEAST THE BAY AREA ISN'T ALONE
The city council of Olympia, Washington has put forth a measure that would prohibit the crew of its namesake nuclear submarine, the USS Olympia, from taking shore leave in the city.
I have to say, if the crew of the USS San Francisco were to take their shore leave in David's and PB's beloved city, I have a hard time believing that such a measure would gather any steam.
Even in Berkeley, renowned around the world for its idiotic and pointless measures, is more of a "stick it to the man" type of city - not particularly interested in demonizing soldiers. I don't know... Who thinks Berkeley can match Olympia in its idiocy?
Tuesday, May 25, 2004:
WHY SAN FRANCISCO SUCKS, PART TWO
I've never really liked this city, though I've tried. It came so well-recommended, I felt there must be something there. It's much as I've felt about mushrooms and fresh tomatoes, highly regarded but ultimately (to my palate) disappointing vegetables.
In the first place is the stupid weather -- and it is stupid weather, weather so temperate that there is little need to make the basic conceptual distinction between the body and its surroundings and in which virtually every day is identical to the next, bland sunshine replacing morning fog punctually at noon. Weather can be a metaphor. It can, as such, inspire states of the soul. San Francisco doesn't have weather. Today, it was sunny. It will be sunny again tomorrow. I've long given up hoping for a major earthquake.
Then there are the city's inhabitants. I don't mean here the legions of the drug-addicted, the homeless, the mad, or the sexually enslaved that San Francisco's city fathers have so wisely invited to live amongst us. These are relatively defenceless and probably deserve, on balance, our pity. What I have in mind is the type San Franciscan, the sort that one encounters when travelling elsewhere. These are, almost without exception, well-off white people and their children. This San Francisco is a city of flip-flopping complacency, middle-aged athleticism, and failed gourmandizing. The young, many of them victims of nineties-era tattoo enthusiasm, pursue hipsterdom, not knowing quite how or when to get off the boat. One wonders how the women -- those who have not escaped into sapphism, that is -- manage the prospect of baren loins and evolutionary obsolescence. It must be difficult. The young men, for their part, seem to stick it out, pursuing unlikely careers while nursing from an eternal adolescence. They will never grow up.
All of these people are being replaced by more vigorous races. It's hard to mourn their passing.
And yet every so often "progressive" San Francisco announces itself with something so grotesque and revolting that it is hard to look the other way. These decadents will inevitably fade into obscurity; unfortunately, they will leave a skid mark after them. The most recent such item to catch my attention was young (Christ, I hope so) Camille T. Taira (" ICE Raids Mission Hotel: Unusual Attack on Immigrant Rights").
It was a typical piece in its way, hardly newsworthy. A bunch of illegals got picked up in a US Customs' raid at a Mission District Hotel. Some of them got chucked out of the country. Apparently an instance of the US government enforcing US laws (hooray!). But Camille managed to dig up controversy here:
i) Camille insists on the "unusual" nature of the raid. She does not, however, dispute the fact that the immigrants were here illegally and were thus perfectly eligible for expulsion. Should Customs give warning next time it intends to pick up illegals?
ii) Camille complains that the Customs' action was in violation of San Francisco's five-year-old policy of refusing to participate in immigration raids. Gee whiz. First, SFPD forces were not involved. Secondly, the city does not have jurisdiction over immigration policy. Thirdly, it should be enforcing state and federal -- as well as city -- law anyway. Refusing to cooperate on immigration matters is in gross violation of the law. Those who passed the relevant city resolution should be over-ruled by the courts or thrown out of office. Or both.
iii) Like any self-respecting SFBG writer, Camille's first allegiances aren't to her subjects but to her readers. Apparently, it just feels good to be on the side of the brown man, especially if he is an illegal immigrant. No matter if that same immigrant drives down the wages of domestic workers. No matter if he deprives other (brown) immigrants of work by the same device. No matter that minorities, like other Americans, are consistently opposed to present immigration policy. No matter that her heroes are breaking the law of the land. No matter that they are contributing to population explosion and environmental degradation. In all cases, morality is elsewhere and for other reasons.
Such moral theater will lead to Camille's ruin -- and ours.
That's why San Francisco sucks. The San Franciscan left prides itself on distinction. And distinction is all that is left it.
Camille writes: " ' We're not street criminals,' a soft-spoken Mexican (who asked not to be named), who's been in the United States only eight months and whose son, nephew, and two friends were deported as a result of the raid, told us. 'We're just here to work and make a life for ourselves'."
It's really very touching. The soft-spoken Mexican, who will not be named, was deported. A familiar and romantic type. Not so the hundreds of thousands and millions of others. Thanks to them, Camille's moral theater will someday cease making sense. And where will Camille find herself then? At the very least, she will find herself living in someone else's country.
I hope she likes it. But I don't think she will.
FRISCO: A SOCIALIST STATE, EN VIVO
Some people cringe at the word "FRISCO," and all of its pejorative semantic meaning. It should be considered something apart from the United States, that 49 square mile of anarchy.
The willful disobeyance of the most practical matters of law are commonplace and have become a part of the normative values of the community.
Hence, "Fuck the Police" now has a very real meaning, perhaps stronger than the days of La Raza Unida (Oakland), Black Panthers (Oakland) and the Symbionese Liberation Army (Oakland).
(Sidebar: One La Raza founder can be found here, conspiring with the mexican government here).
Amidst all of this historic anarchy, along comes middle-of-the-road politico-millionaire, club owner and restaurateur Gavin Newsom, defecating on the Knight Initiative. And this is all they got:
Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart ticked off cases dating to 1896 which she said showed local officials have properly refused to enforce a state law after determining it unconstitutional. Among those cases were a municipal auditor who refused to pay a local commissioner's salary and a traffic official who refused to issue bonds.
Sounds on point, on firm legal ground: an auditor and a traffic official, making determinations as to constitutionality.
The point is, the will of the people mean nothing to the leftist cultural elite, because the people are too stupid to understand the complexities of public policy and the meaning of the equal protection clause of the state constitution. That's why those stupid folks we represent all went to the ballot box, if it did not wind up the bay.
We will take it into our own hands and make the law as we do our normal course of business defying laws, both state and federal. We are FRISCO.
Update: I corrected the misspelled word. Thanks to the reader who pointed this out.
Monday, May 24, 2004:
Why is Nader advising Kerry on his choice of running mate?
LOTS OF FUN NEWS
This weekend's end of weekend news roundup.
A few posts ago, fellow res ipsa blogger Sweeney A. posted on the subject of House Speaker's Dennis Hastert's unseemly attack on fellow Republican John McCain. Today, the New York Times (Carl Hulse, " Hastert, the Reticent Speaker, Suddenly has Plenty to Say") has a revealing portrait:
" He seems determined to do and say what it takes to help Republicans hold on to not only its narrow House majority, but the White House as well. A former wrestling coach, he is showing a willingness to go to the mat."
One way for the Democrats to win in November is to increase their absymal performance among white male voters. Yesterday's New York Times (Rick Lyman, " Yes, Democrats Can Win (some) White Male Voters") has some suggestions, not all of them bad. What they fail to suggest -- and it is extremely suspicious -- is the most obvious route to picking up the votes of disaffected white males -- yes, I mean immigration. Why this surprising lacuna? I'll let the article speak for itself:
" Dick Morris, the political strategist who advised President Bill Clinton and now works for Republicans, said if Mr. Kerry makes a serious play for this white male demographic, he could push his party's more liberal base into Ralph Nader's arms [...] there are other, better ways of appealing to white men, without turning off everyone else. ."
Yet another example of how identity politics ruin the game for the rest of us. For, while those groups that represent minorities resolutely favor continued mass immigration, minorities themselves consistently say that they do not.
VDare's Steve Sailer has a fascinating piece comparing India and China (" Interesting India, Competitive China"). The piece ends on a weak note but is full of surprising details and unexpected contrasts. For example:
" India and its satellite countries share a long border with China. But the Himalayas are second only to the Sahara as a forbidding land barrier. Thus the sharpest racial divide on earth is found along the southern edge of the Himalayas. Mongoloid Tibetan Buddhists, such as the famous Sherpas of the Everest region, are found at high altitudes. Caucasoid Indo-European Hindus are found directly below them, in the warm lowlands where the East Asians won't venture for fear of malaria, for which they lack resistance."
And this, reminiscent of the not-so-ancient debate over outsourcing and national security:
" China focuses on giving the masses a solid basic education that prepares them for manufacturing jobs. The Chinese are building superb infrastructure to support their manufacturing economy. Indeed, the Chinese are building factories so fast, that more than a few observers have joked and/or warned that the Chinese intend in the future to manufacture everything in the world. They won't ever quite get there, but the trend is remarkable … and alarming. [...] This could have dire consequences for America's current political and military hegemony. But the cult of free trade, combined with the fact that nobody in the American media cares about factory work, means that the long-term Chinese challenge is seldom discussed. You might think that if America had to shed manufacturing jobs, we would prefer they go to Mexico to keep down the illegal immigration rate rather than to China, America's strategic competitor. But no one seems to care enough to discuss this either."
The UK's House of Dumb on why the English are even more abject than we are.
Finally, another reason to try Susan Sontag for treason. Really, Susan, it's not such a big deal... or would you rather that your genitals were actually electrocuted....?
Sunday, May 23, 2004:
COMMENTS
To improve comment reliability, we at Res Ipsa Loquitur are considering migrating comments to Blogger's own system. Hopefully, this will result in improved performance for all involved.
Saturday, May 22, 2004:
MOORE TAKES CANNES
The Guardian reports that Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 last night received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the first documentary to do so in nearly 50 years. Moore received a nine minute standing ovation following the announcement of the jury's decision.
"Many people wish to hide the truth, to put it in a closet, but the truth has come out of the closet" Moore said, addressing a jury headed by his compatriot, Quentin Tarantino. "If one tells the people the truth, the Republic will be saved," he added.
The prizes were decided by a jury led by Quentin Tarantino and including actresses Tilda Swinton, Kathleen Turner and Emmanuelle Beart.
Promoted Again
Res ipsa is now an Adorable Little Rodent in the blogosphere ecosystem and the 1623rd most widely linked blog out there.
Compare this with other local bloggers:
Progressive at Cal. Rank: 3032.
Calstuff: rank: 2635.
Facts Machine: rank: 3528.
Friday, May 21, 2004:
ADMISSIONS SCANDAL, PART n
A new study shows how many unqualified students the University of California has accepted in recent years -- a particularly disturbing revelation in a year in which qualified students are being turned away because of "budget cuts."
In critical part:
Although eligibility levels for underrepresented minorities remain at a fraction of the levels for Asian and white applicants, they have close to doubled since 1996.
UC President Robert Dynes attributed the jump to university outreach programs and a recently instated standard called Eligibility in the Local Context, which gives spots to the top 4 percent of students from every high school in the state.
Greenwood said that less than 1 percent of students accepted to UC through the Eligibility in the Local Context program would have otherwise been eligible.
Although some regents praised the growing number of eligible students as a sign of better student performance, other regents were less enthusiastic, attributing the rise to loopholes in the admissions process.
UC Regent John Moores criticized another program UC implemented to broaden UCÂ?s admit pool. The university allows up to 6 percent of students to be admitted under special exceptions for personal talent even if baseline test score or GPA criteria is not met.
What does this mean? Among other things, the much publicized Eligibility in the Local Context (Top 4%) program is a total fraud. 99% of the students admitted through this program would not have been admitted but for it! Thus, only 1% of the students admitted through this program are qualified to attend the University of California.
Appalling. I certainly hope that Governor Schwarzenegger cleans up the Board of Regents fast, while there is still a University of California with academic merit that is worth protecting.
Source: Daily Cal, May 20, 2004
I HAVE TO SAY...
I'm generally not a fan of tax hikes of any kind. But I see little wrong with this proposal.
Thursday, May 20, 2004:
ONE LESS FAKE HATECRIMINAL
Fake hate crime victim and former Claremont McKenna professor Kerri Dunn recently pleaded innocent to fealony and misdemeanor charges. Will her defence be that she hated herself when she spray-painted her car with racist and anti-semitic epithets?
Dunn was delivering a lecture at a forum on racism when she claimed the incident occurred.
And she's not just your run-of-the-mill loser, either:
" The Los Angeles Times reported last month that Dunn was arrested three times in 1999 and 2000.
She paid $75 in fines after being arrested in Nebraska in September 1999 and charged with driving without a license and having fictitious plates on her car, the newspaper reported. A case stemming from a Dec. 31, 1999, arrest for shoplifting was dismissed after Dunn paid court costs. She was arrested again in a shoplifting case on Sept. 29, 2000, according to The Times."
(link via Lonewacko)
LEARNING FROM DIVERSITY
This week's East Bay Express runs a cover story on the new anti-semitism at Berkeley (Anneli Rufus, "Berkeley Intifada: As students embrace the Palestinian cause, Berkeley has lost whatever reputation it may once have had for tolerance"). You are all, I trust, familiar with the details of the case.
What struck me was the astonishment of the narrator and her principal source, recent Cal graduate Micki Weinberg. Apparently, we are to feel sorry for Micki:
" As a young teenager, he had savored heady stories of how Mario Savio and his comrades in the Free Speech Movement danced the hora and sang 'Hava Nagila' at sit-ins and peace rallies forty years ago. The son of left-wing, Jewish intellectuals, Weinberg viewed himself as one too, having spent the summer before his senior year of high school in Myanmar, cataloguing the archives of Rangoon's disintegrating and depopulated Jewish synagogue. 'That's why I came to Berkeley -- because of its strong romantic aura of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio,' he recalls. 'Then I got here and discovered that that light seems to have been extinguished. You have this vitriol. You feel it everywhere. Berkeley is now the epicenter of real hatred'."
Is it shocking to suggest that one of the conditions that produced the situation that so worries Micki (and Anneli) was precisely the kind of leftist romanticism that persuaded him to come to Berkeley in the first place? For well over a generation, leftwing Jews have flattered themselves in the belief that they are in a natural alliance with all racial and ethnic minorities (the same could be said for the sadomasochistic reveries of lapsed Protestantism, though the reasons for the fantasy are different). They had, or so they thought, a common enemy: a suppositionally repressive and intolerant majority culture.
No longer.
Micki, in this sense, has learnt a valuable lesson. Cultural difference is more -- and sometimes much more -- than spicy food and quaint habits of dress. He has gained from his experience at Berkeley -- just not what he had hoped.
Chutzpah
I try to give credit to the Republican party when I can. When they supported budget busting tax cuts I thought, well, at least this will force them to reign in spending. When they passed a spending bill that would have put the Democratic party to shame, I thought, at least other core values remain intact. And as the Republican party has one by one sold out on its core values, I thought, at least there are a few souls in the leadership who believe in something and won't dish out the slime that is so common on the left.
Now, via Tacitus, I see a "Conservative" leader, who wants to pass another ridiculously sized budget, chastising a Vietnam War hero/POW, who opposes such recklessness, for not knowing the meaning of sacrifice. Ugh.
Where does it end?
I urge anyone who has a free minute to contact Hastert and remind him that it won't be long before he will regret leading the House Republicans into this mess.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004:
BRITAIN TO TEACH ORAL SEX
The Guardian reports:
" Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found.
"Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of 'intimacy' such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed.
"Now the government will recommend the scheme, called A Pause, to schools throughout England and Wales following the success of the trial in 104 schools where sexual intercourse among 16-year-olds fell by up to 20 per cent, according to Dr John Tripp of the Department of Child Health at the University of Exeter, who helped to design the course."
Well, I suppose we know what format the exam will take.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004:
JUST A JIGOLO
The American Conservative's gossip artist, Taki, has a very silly and refreshing piece on John Kerry's less than honorable path to power and influence. Kerry, writes Taki, has never wanted to earn anything he wanted, especially when there was a woman who might provide it for him:
" And of course it worked. An $8 million Idaho chalet on five acres; a $12 million Nantucket waterfront beach house; a $6 million Washington, D.C. 23-room townhouse; a $14 million, 90 acre Pennsylvania colonial compound; and a $12 million Beacon Hill, Boston mansion just for starters. Not to mention the Gulfstream jet and other accessories those who were not born into them yearn for. Kerry’s lies, and they are almost Clintonesque, are very significant in the context of his lifestyle. He will do and say anything to get his way, to hell with principles and standards."
"This Multicultural Crap"
Elected politicians in Maryland are currently involved in a particularly stupid flap over multiculturalism. As Michelle Malkin reports for VDare:
" It all started a few weeks ago when former governor William Donald Schaefer walked into a McDonald’s restaurant he had frequented regularly for years. Schaefer, a Democrat who now works as comptroller under Republican governor Robert Ehrlich, ordered the same thing every morning: hot tea and a biscuit. After encountering difficulty with a newly-hired worker with poor English skills, he quit going to the restaurant out of frustration. 'I don't want to adjust to another language,' he declared publicly. 'This is the United States. I think they ought to adjust to us'."
Latino groups predictably seized on the occasion to teach American citizens yet another tedious lesson in "sensitivity". Schaefer and Ehrlich, however, were having none of it. Asked about Schaeffer's remarks, Ehrlich replied:
" I reject the idea of multiculturalism. Once you get into this multicultural crap, this bunk that some folks are teaching in our college campuses and other places, you run into a problem. With respect to this culture, English is the language."
Bravo, Governor Ehrlich. At least someone still has guts.
Quote of the Day
"I can imagine what it's like to kill someone. I can imagine what it's like to cast spells or have superpowers. But imagining what it's like to be Canadian? No." -- Ian McKellen on our mysterious neighbors to the north.
McWhorter on Brown and School Integration
A few posts ago, I mentioned UC Berkeley linguist John McWhorter's many interesting discussions of racial preferences and lingering black under-performance. McWhorter yesterday appeared on PBS' newshour (thanks to Calfiles for the link) to discuss the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. the Board of Education:
" I would say that we tend to forget that the case that black children weren't doing well in 1954 because they weren't around white kids was rather tenuous. I can understand why that had to be said at the time. But an all-black school can be a wonderful school. The problem with education now is not that Brown didn't work. It's that we have other kinds of cultural problems besides segregation and the overt racism that we had at that time."
For those unfamiliar with his work, the "cultural problems" to which McWhorter refers stem from what he has elsewhere termed a " cult of victimology" among black students and intellectuals -- the view that academic achievement is a specifically white virtue and is for that reason to be looked upon with suspicion.
I don't agree with McWhorter in every particular. Too often, his focus is exclusively on black under-achievement, as if our educational system is not racked by systemic problems that effect students of all races. A similar point can be made with regards to his criticism of affirmative action: for McWhorter, the principal objection to racial preferences in academia is the psychological and academic damage that it inflicts on its (African-American) beneficiaries. For critics of affirmative action, presenting themselves as trying to more efficiently help black America is one of the rules of the game. That, however, does not mean that there are not other -- and, in my view, more fundamental -- problems with the system.
But McWhorter does some things very well indeed. In particular, he makes a very persuasive case for his point that African-American culture is involved in a perverse game of inversion with majority culture and that this impedes real progress. His depictions of the psychology of victimhood and the insidious interventions of shame-faced white liberals are similarly to the point.
ROBERTS VS. BHAGWATI
Those of you still interested in the outsourcing debate -- conducted here and elsewhere but ultimately stymied by reliance on hearsay -- may want to have a look at the recent debate between Paul Craig Roberts and Jagdish Bhagwati in the Wall Street Journal (reprinted at VDare).
I would not like to say who won -- because I don't know -- but perhaps it says something about the state of economic knowledge that the position of each depends upon predictions that neither can prove.
Monday, May 17, 2004:
DAN SIEGEL: ASSHOLE EXTRAORDINAIRE
Obviously, there are lots of people that piss me off on a regular basis. Their mere existence reminds me why people need to be political in the first place. One of them is Dan Siegel, of ultra-pinko-commie National Lawyers Guild fame (history, including the requisite purges, here, and one agenda here).
First, he denies educational opportunities to the children of Oakland by driving the district into the ground with his stupid policies. He basically makes his living out of exploiting children, e.g. organizing high-schoolers to protest instead of studying their algebra or biology and indoctrinating them into the cult of victimology and revolution. Then, when he is not organizing juvenile delinquents against the "establishment" he is filing frivolous lawsuits, like this one:
To hear Oakland school board member Dan Siegel tell it, the board is far from obsolete.
He believes that the state takeover of the city's troubled public schools last year shouldn't have stripped the school board of all its powers, and he wants most of them back.
Siegel, an attorney, who was president of the board before his colleagues voted to oust him from the post last week, went to work on a lawsuit aiming to do just that.
The suit, filed Friday in Alameda County Superior Court, names state public schools chief Jack O'Connell and claims the state Department of Education exceeded its authority and "usurped'' the rights of Oakland residents to elect a school board.
Siegel claims that the special legislation used by the state to seize control of the local schools is "an unconstitutional abridgement of the rights of the city's electors under the Oakland City Charter." Never mind that the bill was based on the state law giving state officials authority to take over troubled school districts.
Why isn't there a law that says every board member of a bankrupt school district shall not ever be near a school, much less be able to assert decision-making rights in a court of law? Fiscal responsibility in education needs to go further in the legislature, so people like Dan Siegel will never harm your children again. They should ban handguns, drugs and Dan Siegel within 300 feet of a school.
The lawsuit is disappointing and suggests a repeat of the petty infighting and internal confusion that paved the road to the district's collapse. Oakland schools were first thought to be nearly $82 million in debt, a number later recalculated at $53 million. The state extended the district a record $100 million line of credit.
Siegel's suit names 18 plaintiffs, a group that looks more like a guest list to a barbecue at Siegel's house than a broad cross-section of Oakland voters.
Yep, it's called a "good old boy" network from the city that gave you the Symbionese Liberation Army. The one thing about radical-leftist mafia is that they have no shame in the courtroom:
Put it all together, and the lawsuit starts to look like political ax- grinding in triplicate.
***
CASUAL BFL ROUNDUP
Certain BFLeaguers feature regular round-ups of selected BFL sites. We return the favor, in no particular order:
Accidental Verbosity tries to quit smoking. Baldilocks looks at the once prospective Kerry/McCain ticket and why it makes the Democrats look bad. Infinite Monkeys ponders the recent WMD discovery in Iraq. Patterico awards the "scum of the year award". The Right Coast casts a skeptical eye on Frank Rich. And, last but not least, XRLQ expresses some well-deserved outrage over the Alfonzo Rodriguez, Jr. case.
WINNING THE BATTLE, LOSING THE WAR?
Everyone's talking about Seymour Hersh's latest expose in the New Yorker, which seems likely to result in a new Congressional investigation:
" Rumsfeld and Cambone went a step further, however: they expanded the scope of the sap, bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation."
Apparently it was not for nothing that the Pentagon organized a special screening of the Battle of Algiers in the weeks following the onset of the War. One thing should not be forgotten, however: the French won the Battle of Algiers. When defeat came, it was in the streets and cafes of Paris...
I Promise I Don't Have an Unhealthy Obsession With Moore, But...
This is distressing, although somewhat expected. But lets face it, Mikey could have gotten on stage and taken a shit on a picture of Bush and gotten the same response.
(Reminder to self: Ugly, ugly man.)
THE RIGHT MOBILIZES AGAINST THE RINOS
House amnesty enthusiast Chris Cannon (R-UT) faces a stiff opposition in the upcoming UT Congressional primaries. The campaign to replace Cannon is being led by two groups, RightMarch.com and ProjectUSA, both of which badly need donations if they are to compete against Cannon, who has the backing of the Party establishment in Washington.
Should Cannon lose, things should get interesting at the national level:
" Conservative political action committee RightMarch.com successfully recruited former Republican Utah state senator Matt Throckmorton to run against incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) in the upcoming primary to serve as "a wake-up call" to all liberal Republican legislators who run as Republicans but subsequently abandon their conservative principles once they are elected into office."
WMDs, sort of...
The New York Times is reporting that a roadside bomb containing Sarin nerve gas was recently discovered in Baghdad:
" General Kimmitt said American officials believe the weapon came from the stockpiles of the Hussein regime. Mr. Hussein had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War."
The Belmont Club
...has an excellent post (as usual) on the media's highjacking of the war.
Money Quote:
The defeat being advertised by the press is a wholly new phenomenon: one which leaves the vanquished army untouched and the victor devastated; the economy of the vanquished burgeoning and that of the victor in destitution; the territory of the loser unoccupied and that of the winner garrisoned. It is an inversion of all the traditional metrics of victory and defeat. That the assertion is not instantly ludicrous is an indication of the arrival of a new and potentially revolutionary form of political wafare.
Mark Helprin
...offers what, in my mind, is a spot on analysis of the failures surrounding Iraq from the outset.
Money quote:
In a war that has steadily grown beyond expectations, America has been poorly served by those who govern it. The Democrats are guilty of seemingly innate ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and, both, of lack of imagination, probity, and preparation--and, perhaps above all, of subjecting the most serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship.
This stuff seems as clear as day to me, but reading this article has made me realize the monopoly of the partisans and the serious dearth of honest analysis concerning Iraq in the media.
Read the whole thing.
Moore Again
Whenever I get frustrated with the latest idiocy to come from Mikey's mouth, I comfort myself with the knowledge that I am infinitely more attractive than he.
Saturday, May 15, 2004:
Is W. Next?
Looks like next victim of "the curse" should be Bush.
Friday, May 14, 2004:
PERVERSITY
State Senator Tom McClintock on the ongoing tuition break fiasco:
" American citizens from other states pay more than three times as much as illegal aliens to attend California schools. An American citizen who moves to California from Arizona will pay $12,946 to attend the California State University. While she is waiting tables to pay her tuition costs, her taxes will be used to subsidize illegal immigrants who are paying only $2,776 to attend the same school.
... "The immigrant who respected and obeyed our nation's laws will be charged $22,504 a year to attend the University of California, while the illegal immigrant who disrespected and disobeyed the law will pay only $6,028.
"What rationale is offered to defend this stark and obvious injustice?"
Fridays
Seeing as how some people seem to have rather short attention spans, I’ve taken the hint and chosen a much shorter excerpt for this week’s conservative verse.
Walter Scott was a fire-breathing reactionary; he was also one of the finest narrativists and lyricists to have ever used the English language. He is best known for his historical fiction and Scottish nationalist literature. Like Pope, Scott was a member of the Tory party. In fact, he was so anti-revolutionary that he took it upon himself to organize militias along the Scottish border to keep out revolutionaries in the case of an invasion from the south.
I first came across this verse while reading a short story by Edward Everett Hale called The Man Without a Country. As story begins in the early 19th century America, the eponymous character is involved in a treason trial. “When the president of the court asked him at the close, whether he wished to say anything to show that he had always been faithful to the United States, he cried out, in a fit of frenzy: ‘Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!’” The president, shocked with disbelief, grants him his wish, and sentences him to be transported on merchant vessels for the rest of his life, with explicit orders that no one on any ship ever mention America to him again.
This excerpt from The Lay of the Last Ministrel serves as a sort of epigraph to the story – and rightfully so. Scott’s verse is a simple musing on the topic of patriotism. For Scott, it isn’t about devotion to a state, but rather about the basic human need to identify with something larger than oneself.
BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.
This one is for David
It was bound to happen sooner or later, really.
Thursday, May 13, 2004:
IN YET OTHER ELECTION NEWS...
Ralph Nader was last night officially endorsed as candidate for President at a national Reform Party Convention. The Reform Party's support is likely to put him on the ballot in seven additional states, including the battle ground states of Florida and Michigan.
So we should expect lots more Democratic Party moralizing of the sort we've come to know and love. Apart from that, I'm afraid the announcement leaves me cold. Nader has many silly ideas but then Bush does, too. Since Kerry has chosen to preserve his dignity by having no ideas at all, he falls into a category entirely his own.
[ Off-Subject Aside: Instapundit and Right Coast have some suggestive remarks on the possible motives for intensive press coverage of the Abu Ghreib fiasco.]
[ Off-Off-Subject Aside: Our only friend in Belgium, the Dog of Flanders, has the almost-scoop on the bogus Iraqi rape photos.]
[ Off-Subject, etc.: We provisionally return to linking to Calstuff in the hope that, being reasonable people interested in open dialogue, they return the favor.]
IN OTHER ELECTION NEWS...
In what the Guardian reports is India's biggest election upset since Independence, Indian voters today turned the Hindu nationalist BJP party out of office in favor of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi's Congress Party. Gandhi will be the fourth member of the Nehru-Gandhi family to lead India.
MoDo on Iraq
Testifying before the Senate yesterday, General Richard Myers admitted that we're checkmated in Iraq.
"There is no way to militarily lose in Iraq," he said, describing the generals' consensus. "There is also no way to militarily win in Iraq."
Now, I wouldn't necessarily consider myself an expert on chess, but I do play from time to time. Wouldn't the situation that General Myers describes be more accurately called a stalemate? Or would that be just a little too generous for Dowd? Just asking.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004:
ROUND TWO: THE WRAP UP
I have now fully responded to Jon's attempted rebuttal of my eight theses in support of immigration restriction. For ease of navigation, here is my summary of the debate as it presently stands.
i) Immigration Depresses Wages. My authorities say that immigration depresses wages. Some (but not all) of Jon's authorities say that, too. My authorities are also better respected and of more recent vintage than his.
ii) Immigration Erodes the Tax Base. I argue that immigrants cost more and pay less than other Americans. After some unsuccessful maneuvering, Jon rests his case with the (irrelevant) assertion that corporations don't pay enough taxes.
iii) Immigration Generates Over-Population. I show that immigrants and their children are the unique cause of rapid domestic population growth. Jon conflates the issue of over-population with the (distinct) issue of relative scale. He does not deny that immigration is driving domestic population growth.
iv) Immigration Contributes to Environmental Degradation. Jon allows that immigration contributes to environmental degradation. I show how he cooked his figures and that the immigrant contribution to environmental stress is much greater than he admits.
v) Immigration and Cultural Conflict. I claim that, given present cultural and political conditions, immigration increases domestic inter-ethnic conflict. Again, Jon does not deny this. Instead, he seems to assume an implicit moral claim according to which, whatever the cultural and political costs of immigration, Americans deserve to bear them.
vi) Immigration and the Welfare State. I claim that immigration erodes support for redistributive policies. Jon agrees but thinks that it's a necessary sacrifice to ensure another kind of redistribution. I don't.
vii) Immigration and National Security. I claim that immigration sometimes poses special risks for national security and that policy should take these risks into account. Jon refuses to consider this possibility.
viii) Immigration, anomie, and crime. Jon never responded to this one, perhaps because he knows that around 30 percent of those incarcerated in federal prisons are criminal aliens. Not surprisingly, the figures for alien criminality are even more striking when one looks at immigration intensive states like California.
IMMIGRATION AND NATIONAL SECURITY, PART TWO
In my first post, I asserted that an open immigration policy entails a number of security risks. Jon disagrees. September 11th, he says, was the result of " the Bush Administration's demonstrated ineptitude in protecting this country, such as by ignoring intelligence data from the Clinton Adminstration and foreign intelligence services, shifting priorities to an ill-conceived missile defense system, and many other missteps." All of that may be true (though obviously the Bush administration was not alone in ignoring the treat posed by radical Islam) but it is also the case that almost all of those who carried out the September 11th attacks were here illegally. Were immigration laws enforced, even in their present, lax form, the terrorists would not have had their opportunity.
Jon's response is to pretend that I am making a covert case for ethnic group profiling. He thus points to a study supporting the counter-intuitive conclusion that random screening is more effective than profiling (my response: ok, so why not do both?). My point, however, was not that profiling would have prevented September 11th (though it would have). My point is that, had we bothered to enforce our laws in the first place -- by, for example, tracking and expelling those who overstay their visas -- the al Queda cell responsible for the attacks would have never succeeded in assembling on American territory. No matter, Jon says: al Queda would have just recruited terrorists from the domestic population to carry out the attacks. Maybe, maybe not. But it is at the very least significant that, so far, American nationals in the service of radical Islam have yet to carry out a single attack on American soil. I suspect that Jon is seriously over-estimating the appeal of Islamacism outside immigrant groups and traditionally Islamic states. What recent experience does tell us is that, when Islamic terrorists strike the West, they are either foreign Muslims or their immigrant co-ethnics. No surprise there.
I also worried in my original post over the consequences of Mexican immigration to the Southwest. In my view, importing a new majority in states that border the country from which that majority is drawn is unwise, especially when ill-feeling and dispute persists over questions of territory. Jon replies that Mexican-Americans don't yet have their own political party. Again, Jon makes a true but uninteresting point. Mexican-Americans may not have their own political party but they do already have a very powerful lobby in close cooperation with the Mexican government. Add political party pandering to this mix and it becomes clear how Mexico goes about increasing its say over our internal affairs. While I do not forsee partition in the near future, I do see much meddling, especially in what concerns immigration policy. For an example of how this works in practice, consider the case of Chris Cannon, about whom I've already written on several occasions.
Finally, Jon continues to object to what seems to me a perfectly obvious point concerning problems of allegiance in multi-ethnic armies. " There's also an excellent counterexample from American history that Orland neglects," Jon writes. " Japanese-Americans served valiantly in the American armed forces during World War II, even though the U.S. had declared war against Japan. This is true, even though some of these servicemen had legitimate grievances, because their families were sent to internment camps and had their property taken away from them." Many Japanese-Americans did serve valiantly in the US military. Quite a few others plotted to sabotage the war effort, which is why the zone and internment policy was, despite its ill-deserved reputation, perfectly reasonable. For more on this, see Roger D. McGrath's fascinating discussion of internment practice and myth in the American Conservative. As McGrath points out:
" By 1940, more than 20,000 American-born Japanese had been educated in Japan. Known as kibei, they were fluent in Japanese, steeped in Japanese history and culture, and supporters of Japanese expansion in the Far East. [...] Kibei formed the Sokoku Kenkyu Seinen Dan (Young Men’s Association for the Study of the Mother Country) and the Sokuji Kikoku Hoshi Dan (Organization to Return Immediately to the Homeland to Serve) and called for all American-born Japanese to renounce their U.S. citizenship. Nearly 6,000 did. They became known as “renunciants” and were interned at Tule Lake Segregation Center in northeastern California.[...] Thousands of other American-born Japanese served in the armed forces of Japan. Several of them became infamous for their interrogations and tortures of American prisoners."
On balance, the case of Japanese-Americans in World War II supports my position, not Jon's. For it shows that allegiance in multi-ethnic societies is a complicated business and, as such, should not be taken for granted.
My point stands: mass immigration poses special security risks. This does not mean that the US should admit no immigrants. But it does mean that we should exercise caution in who we choose to admit and should base our choices on a reasonable assessment of America's short and long-term security interests. At present, we are doing neither.
IMMIGRATION AND THE WELFARE STATE, PART TWO
I pointed out that immigration and ethnic diversity more generally erode support for the welfare state. Jon agrees: " It's true that social welfare spending tends to be higher in ethnically homogeneous societies than in ethnically heterogeneous societies."
So already I've won this one. But let's see what else he has to say. After admitting my point, Jon writes "on the other hand, the United States has historically had low welfare state spending compared to the rest of the developed world, even before the boom in immigration that resulted after the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act." That's true. According to one much-discussed account of why "it didn't happen here", high (pre-65) degrees of ethnic difference have always stimied efforts for social redistribution in the US. Contemporary mass immigration just exacerbates a phenomenon that has long characterized American society.
Jon then concludes: " Some liberals have argued that, if forced to make a choice, humanitarian principles might force them to accept a relatively smaller welfare state in exchange for preserving relatively liberal immigration laws and an 'open' society." That's not really so surprising since, for many liberals, immigration is just another way of shifting status and wealth in the direction of the oppressed brown other who haunts their imagination and flatters their conscience.
In any case, what "liberals might do" is irrelevant; I'm not a liberal.
CULTURAL STRIFE AND RACIALIZED POLITICS, PART TWO
Jon criticizes my position on this issue by accusing me of conflating very distinct questions. One of the many reasons I oppose present immigration policy is that it enjoys an unhealthy symbiosis with affirmative action and racial preferences. Today's immigrants, most of whom are "brown", find themselves eligible for racial preferences in hiring and university admissions. If you think affirmative action is always and everywhere a good thing -- as I suspect Jon does -- then I suppose that this is not a problem. If you feel, as I do, that it's a bad idea to begin with and so much worse when it is extended to groups who do not meet the historical description of the program's target recipients (African-Americans) then obviously massive, ongoing Third World immigration is going to give you pause. Jon thinks that this is a non sequitor. It is not: immigration is a problem here because it expands an already obnoxious practice that shows no signs of going away.
I also claimed that some immigrant groups bring with them cultural practices of which most Americans don't approve. Jon's response is to say that I am somehow "blaming the victim". After all, Jon continues, what if we were Germans in the 1930's and those immigrants weren't immigrants but rather Jews. Wouldn't complaining about their behavior contribute to the anti-semitic ambiance? Yes, it would. But happily we are not 1930's Germans, the immigrants to whom I refer are not German Jews, and -- a shocker! -- there is no ongoing persecution of racial minorities in the US.
That's right, Jon: I don't believe that immigrants (qua immigrants) count as a victim class. I assume that we'll just have to disagree on this one.
IMMIGRATION AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION, PART TWO
Jon's response to this one is another example of the curiously oblique logic we have already witnessed in his reply to my comments on immigration and tax-base erosion ( Jon's case: perhaps immigrants cost the government more than they pay into it; US corporations don't pay enough taxes; therefore, immigration is not a problem).
In my initial post, I made the obvious point that, " as the population grows, so will strains on the environment." Jon's response was to get down his Julian Simon and whip out the calculator.
I can't say that I'm impressed with the results.
i) In the first place, Jon relies on the 1990 Census as his source for the US's foreign born population. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess why: according to the 1990 Census, the foreign born population stood at 19.7 million; it is now at 30 million. Which figure you choose will obviously have consequences for any estimate of immigrants' impact on the environment. Check out Jon's site and do the math: using the most recent figures, immigrant impact is considerably greater than the impact quoted by Jon.
ii) Jon also conveniently ignores higher immigrant birth rates (see my discussion of population growth), as if the immigrant contribution to population growth ends the moment an immigrant crosses the border. As I've said, however, more people means more consumption and immigrants make more children than do other groups. They thus contribute to population growth -- and hence consumption -- at a higher rate than the native born. If one adds these children to the appropriately revised Census figures, the immigrant impact on the environment once becomes all the more evident.
But the strangest part of Jon's strange argument is that, in making it, he once again concedes what he claims to be refuting. For even the bad figures that he cites show that immigrants do indeed contribute to environmental degradation. It is thus particularly odd that his post should end on such a complacent note: " Regardless of what you use to model human impact on the environment," Jon writes, " you can't blame immigrants for the environmental problems America faces. You either have to consume less resources or develop more resource-efficient technologies." Yes, or reduce the rate of population growth by, for example, limiting immigration.
The only sense that I can make of all this is that Jon mistook me for claiming that environmental stress is entirely caused by immigration. But then of course I said nothing of the kind. In a move reminiscent of the recent Sierra Club battles, Jon's case turns on the ultimately uninteresting observation that the unpleasant phenomenon in question has several causes. Granted. But isn't it reasonable to diminish the unpleasantness by eliminating as many of that phenomenon's causes as possible? I'm still waiting for a response...
WAR BRUTALIZES...
... and I'm afraid that I no longer feel quite so shocked by the recent prisoner abuses. Such is the logic of violence. Your Daily Prescott has more.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004:
IMMIGRATION GENERATES OVER-POPULATION, PART TWO
In my initial post, I claimed that present immigration policy is leading to over-population. An anonymous reader -- who may well have been Jon himself -- soon complained that I had not substantiated this charge. So I substantiated it.
Now Jon complains that my argument "lacks proper context". What is that, you may ask?
" According to sociologist Douglas Massey, the average yearly rate of immigration to the United States from 1901 to 1930 was 6.3 per 1000 residents. By contrast, if you combine both legal and illegal immigration, the average yearly rate of immigration to the United States from 1971 to 1993 was only 3.8 per 1000 residents (The New Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States, by Douglas S. Massey, September 1995, Population and Development Review, Table 2, p. 647). David Orland then takes U.S. Census Bureau projections for the next 60 years and blames the subsequent rise in population on immigration (mostly Hispanic/Latino immigration), but he can only support that assumption if he assumes that Hispanic/Latino fertility rates will stay constant for the next 60 years! Yet he provides no evidence for why this assumption has the least shred of plausibility."
Of all of Jon's complaints, this is the weirdest. In the first place, there is an obvious distinction to be made between the issue of rate of immigration and over-population (rates were indeed higher earlier but, since the population was below 110 million in 1910 and consumption patterns much different, that fact is totally irrlevant). In the second place, projections are, well, projections. In the present case, the Census Bureau's projection depends upon two assumptions: i) continued high rates of Latino fertility (a condition borne out by presently available statistics on the behavior of native born Latino reproductive behavior); ii) the fact of continued mass immigration.
In raising the issue, my point of course was that the only way to reduce population growth is to cut down on immigration. By pointing out that projections are only projections, Jon has contributed precisely nothing to the debate. I know that they are projections. That's precisely why I think it is a good idea to limit immigration -- by impeding one of the projection's conditions, I hope to prevent that projection's realization.
Come on, Jon, you can do better than this.
VDARE links to Res Ipsa!
In between rebuttals, I noticed that VDare's Joe Guzzardi has linked to our ongoing coverage of Utah's amnesty controversy.
Accepting MALDEF's 2002 "Excellence in Leadership Award", Utah Representative Chris Cannon trilled:
" We love immigrants in Utah. And we don't oftentimes make the distinction between legal and illegal. In fact I think Utah was the first state in the country to legislate the ability to get a driver’s license based on the matricula consular and of that I am proud.”
Cannon had better start making that distinction. And fast.
IMMIGRATION ERODES THE TAX BASE, PART TWO
In my initial post, I claimed that:
" Illegals typically don't pay personal income tax. Many legals don't either. This has led to a crisis situation in many districts. There, the state pays for emergency health care, education, and assorted infrastructural costs. Immigrants represent a drain on all of these but pay into the system at a much lower rate than natives, who are thus confronted by ever higher tax rates. Much of the money immigrants earn also immediately leaves the economy in the form of remittances to the home country."
Jon's response:
i) The late immigration enthusiast Julian Simon said that it isn't so: " From the time of entry until about l2 years later, immigrants use substantially less than do native families of such public services as welfare and unemployment compensation payments, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and schooling for children, largely due to less use of Social Security because of the youthful age of immigrants. Later, immigrant use becomes roughly equal to that of natives."
ii) The Urban Institute says that, while state and local governments suffer, the Federal government gains: " Contrary to the public's perception, when all levels of government are considered together, immigrants generate significantly more in taxes paid than they cost in services received. This surplus is unevenly distributed among different levels of government, however, with immigrants (and natives) generating a net surplus to the federal government, but a net cost to some states and most localities."
iii) Jon concludes with a bunch of other reasons: First, I don't supply evidence for the claim that immigrants pay personal income tax less often than natives. Second, my reference to immigrant remissions to the home country ignores the much more significant question of corporate tax evasion.
I reply in turn:
i) Julian Simon. The late Julian Simon, a Professor of Marketing at the University of Maryland B-School, while not (unlike Jon) a supporter of open borders, was long the media's favorite source for professional immigration enthusiasm. He was also often wrong. As the Center for Immigration Studies (a source that Jon himself approves) reported in March 2003:
" In 1996, 22 percent of immigrant-headed households used at least one major welfare program, compared to 15 percent of native households. [...] The persistently high rate of welfare use by immigrant households is almost entirely explained by their heavy reliance on Medicaid, use of which has actually risen modestly. [...] The total combined value of benefits and payments received by immigrant households from welfare programs is almost unchanged in inflation-adjusted dollars, averaging almost $2,000 in 2001, about 50 percent higher than natives. [...] 21 percent of non-refugee legal immigrant households used at least one major welfare program in 2001, compared to 15 percent of natives. [...] Consistent with previous research, this study finds that use of welfare programs does not decline significantly the longer immigrants live in the country. In 2001, households headed by immigrants who had been in the country for more than 20 years continued to use the welfare system at significantly higher rates than natives. [...] Use of the welfare system varies significantly by country. In 2001, immigrants from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America had the highest use rates, while those from South Asia, Western Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Canada had the lowest." And so on.
ii) Local vs. Federal Government. Jon's wrong here, too. Immigration results in a net deficit.
The Center for Immigration Studies reports:
" The National Research Council has estimated that the net fiscal cost of immigration ranges from $11 billion to $22 billion per year, with most government expenditures on immigrants coming from state and local coffers, while most taxes paid by immigrants go to the federal treasury. The net deficit is caused by a low level of tax payments by immigrants, because they are disproportionately low-skilled and thus earn low wages, and a higher rate of consumption of government services, both because of their relative poverty and their higher fertility.
This is especially true of illegal immigration. Even though illegal aliens make little use of welfare, from which they are generally barred, the costs of illegal immigration in terms of government expenditures for education, criminal justice, and emergency medical care are significant. California has estimated that the net cost to the state of providing government services to illegal immigrants approached $3 billion during a single fiscal year. The fact that states must bear the cost of federal failure turns illegal immigration, in effect, into one of the largest unfunded federal mandates."
For more on the relatively high rates of immigrant welfare dependency, please see the 2000 Census.
See also this dramatic table:
iii) Income tax and remittances: Jon charges that I don't supply evidence that immigrants pay income tax less often than natives. He also charges that I don't pay enough attention to corporate taxes, as if the question of immigrant remittances had something to do with that. The issue of remittances is clear enough; you can make of it what you will. As the Sa n Diego Union-Tribune reported not so long ago:
" Latino immigrants sent a record $23 billion to relatives and others in their home countries last year despite the soft economy, a report released yesterday found. [...] Remittances to Mexico and Central America alone will represent more than $14 billion of the total this year, up from $10 billion two years ago, according to the report by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Inter-American Development Bank."
Other immigrant groups behave similarly and, in all cases, the remittances are untaxed. This is money that leaves the US economy and doesn't come back. Whether or not corporations pay enough taxes is obviously another question altogether. But thanks for the red herring.
As for income tax, the Federation for American Immigration Reform reports that " Overall, immigrants pay less in taxes than they consume in public services, although this varies considerably depending on the immigration category. Vernez and McCarthy conclude that much of the negative effects of current immigration could be alleviated by some changes that would pare immigration back from the current level (near one million per year) to between 300,000 to 800,000 per year."
Conclusion: Immigrants spend more and pay less than other Americans. It is, at the very least, a reason for choosing your immigrants wisely -- i.e., precisely what present policy prevents us from doing.
IMMIGRATION DEPRESSES WAGES, PART TWO
A few days ago, Jon Pennington at Progcal finally got around to responding to my case for immigration restriction (strangely, he has chosen to take issue with the three least controversial of my eight theses). In this and the next two posts, I reply.
In my initial post, I asserted that immigration depresses the wages of native workers. In support of this assertion, I cited a recent study by Harvard economist George Borjas to the same effect. Jon now replies: "Orland quotes one study by George Borjas claiming that immigrants depress wages, but neglects to quote other studies by Borjas that undermine his initial thesis." He then goes on to supply us with a list of publications relating to the issue (1982-1993) prepared by the Urban Institute.
His triumphant conclusion: " Two of the studies quoted in the table come from Orland's authority on immigration himself, George Borjas. The 1983 Borjas study concludes that African-American wages are higher in areas with high populations of Latino immigrants, while the 1987 Borjas study concludes that the effects of earnings on native-born men are small and that immigrants primarily lower the wages of other immigrants. The cumulative findings of the other studies indicate that immigration does reduce wages, but the effect is quite small, typically a fraction of a percentage point for every 10 percent increase in immigration."
There are two points to be made here. First, notice that even some of Jon's authorities recognize that immigration reduces native wages, albeit in a diminishingly small way. Second, notice that the studies Jon cites are all between fifteen and twenty years old, whereas the Borjas study I quoted was released this month. Generally speaking, a scholar's most recently expressed views are understood to supercede his older ones when the two conflict (the scholar may have changed his mind or his methods or the object of investigation may have changed).
Conclusion: Jon has not made a case against the claim that immigration depresses wages; he has rather made the (true but uninteresting) case that the views of George Borjas have evolved over the course of his career.
To reiterate Borjas' (perfectly intuitive) conclusions:
" Statistical analysis shows that when immigration increases the supply of workers in a skill category, the earnings of native-born workers in that same category fall. The negative effect will occur regardless of whether the immigrant workers are legal or illegal, temporary or permanent. Any sizable increase in the number of immigrants will inevitably lower wages for some American workers. Conversely, reducing the supply of labor by strict immigration enforcement and reduced legal immigration would increase the earnings of native workers."
McCain on Immigration
Since Sweeney asked... Yes, I am afraid that John McCain is one of the bad guys. Here is his record on immigration legislation. A few years ago, he dithered on the issue. Since 2002, however, he has been consistently on the wrong side of the issue -- supporting tuition breaks for illegals, co-sponsoring the Bushite amnesty, co-sponsored the Senate ag-bill, etc.
Yay!
We're a "flappy bird" in the blogger ecosystem (and no longer a "slithering reptile")...
In Defence of John McCain
There has been talk in the punditry lately suggesting a bi-partisan presidential ticket – with John McCain joining Kerry as a running mate. It seems obvious to me that this will never happen, if for no other reason then McCain’s loyalty to the Republican Party.
In any event, I began thinking about McCain’s reputation among Conservatives. He’s often referred to as a “liberal” Republican along with Specter and Snowe. I disagree.
McCain earned this reputation by presenting himself as a bit of a maverick – especially in regards to campaign finance reform and environmental issues. But his critics on the right overlook one fact: he is actually a fairly conservative politician. McCain has a lifetime rating of 84 (/100) by the American Conservative Union. Room for improvement, no doubt, but compare with Republicans Olympia Snow (56) and Arlen Specter (43) and former Republican Jim Jeffords (26) and a vivid contrast emerges.
Let’s see where he opposed the ACU last year:
“Death Tax” Repeal. S. Con. Res. 23 (Roll Call 62) – Voted Against
Budget Resolution. S. Con. Res. 23 (Roll Call 134) – Voted Against
Taxes on Investment. S. 1054 (Roll Call 171) – Voted Against
Tax Cuts. HR 2 (Roll Call 179) – Voted Against
Let’s see, he voted against 4 of the biggest budget busting measures in recent political memory. I don’t want to get into a debate about the Bush economic policies right now, but suffice it to say, that I won’t deny the title of "conservative" to someone who refuses to spend money that the government doesn’t have. But why listen to me. Here is McCain explaining himself in March 2003, in words that now seem rather prescient.
“Let me stress, however, that I am, like my colleagues, concerned with the weakened state of our economy, and I do not dismiss lightly arguments in support of stimulating our economy with tax cuts. I know the negligible growth in our economy today has left many Americans without work, their investments and saving diminished, with lower standards of living, and that their elected representatives are expected to do something to help alleviate their suffering. I may have concerns that some parts of the administration’s proposed tax cuts would not provide the near term stimulus necessary to strengthen our obviously anemic economic recovery. However, I am certainly willing – even inclined – to consider tax cuts that would provide a more immediate stimulus, such as, for instance, a reduction in payroll taxes. But not, Mr. President, at this time.
“The United States is currently engaged in a global war against terrorism, and will, in all likelihood, soon commence a necessary war to disarm Iraq by destroying the regime of Saddam Hussein. The costs of these enterprises are not known with any degree of certainty at this time. Nor are the costs we will incur after what I believe, what I fervently hope, will be a brief, successful war in Iraq, as we seek to establish the foundations for a peaceful, stable and democratizing Iraq. The administration has not provided the Congress with a realistic estimate of how much this worthwhile endeavor will cost the U.S. Treasury. I don’t fault them for that. The costs are simply not knowable at this time.
“I believe the war in Iraq can be concluded successfully in a relatively brief time. But it is surely possible that the conflict won’t meet our best estimates for its probable duration. It might take longer than we hope. Or it may exceed our hopes. As any responsible war planner will tell you, it is always wise to expect the unexpected in war. Few battle plans have realized in their execution the planners’ every assumption.
“Moreover, we do not know at this time how great will be the costs of meeting our responsibilities in a post war Iraq or with how many other countries that burden will be shared. The answer to those questions will depend, more than anything else, on how quickly and how thoroughly this military action succeeds..."
More on McCain when I have the time.
Hurray For Opportunism!
I know you all were worried about the Canadian Conservative party: that it was being side-roaded in an increasingly socialized Canada. Not to worry. The Torys decided to drop their values in a valiant attempt retain significance. (Note: The article doesn't say exactly what they will now be signifying.)
Monday, May 10, 2004:
SEE? WE DON'T ALWAYS LOSE...
So Representative Chris Cannon (R-UT) is going to face a primary battle after all.
Ha, ha.
Under normal circumstances, Cannon's defeat would have been unthinkable. Cannon's brother is the state GOP chairman; he enjoys wide support from the Washington GOP establishment; he has already outspent his opponent, Matt Throckmorton, 18 times over. But, as I've been saying all along, the Republican base really, really doesn't like the Party leadership's push for a new round of amnesties, an effort in which Representative Cannon is heavily involved.
Throckmorton's primary campaign is sure to be an uphill battle. As Project USA reports:
" According to Federal Election Commission data posted by The Center For Responsive Politics, 94% of the non-PAC contributions to Cannon's reelection campaign have come from out of state -- the vast majority of it from the Washington, DC metro area. [...] PACs, meanwhile, have kicked in $195,188 so far to make sure Cannon goes back to Washington. Ninety-three percent of the PAC money coming from business special interests -- many representing industries that profit by Cannon's creative interpretation of the word 'amnesty' or his efforts to raise the import quotas on foreign labor. [...] And the number one 'industry' giving to Chris Cannon? Lobbyists."
Still, Cannon's humiliating defeat at the Utah Convention bodes well for the future. It is also reason to donate to Project USA, which sponsored the billboard campaign that so successfully rallied opposition to the Cannon amnesties.
WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG
VDH with an accurate assessment of Western weakness in the WSJ:
" So at precisely the time of these increasingly frequent terrorist attacks, the silly gospel of multiculturalism insisted that Westerners have neither earned the right to censure others, nor do they possess the intellectual tools to make judgments about the relative value of different cultures. And if the initial wave of multiculturalist relativism among the elites--coupled with the age-old romantic forbearance for Third World roguery--explained tolerance for early unpunished attacks on Americans, its spread to our popular culture only encouraged more.
This nonjudgmentalism--essentially a form of nihilism--deemed everything from Sudanese female circumcision to honor killings on the West Bank merely 'different' rather than odious. Anyone who has taught freshmen at a state university can sense the fuzzy thinking of our undergraduates: Most come to us prepped in high schools not to make 'value judgments' about 'other' peoples who are often 'victims' of American 'oppression.' Thus, before female-hating psychopath Mohamed Atta piloted a jet into the World Trade Center, neither Western intellectuals nor their students would have taken him to task for what he said or condemned him as hypocritical for his parasitical existence on Western society. Instead, without logic but with plenty of romance, they would more likely have excused him as a victim of globalization or of the biases of American foreign policy. They would have deconstructed Atta's promotion of anti-Semitic, misogynist, Western-hating thought, as well as his conspiracies with Third World criminals, as anything but a danger and a pathology to be remedied by deportation or incarceration."
This romanticism can be found at home, too, as VDH is himself dimly aware. It's called immigration policy.
PANDER AND LOSE
VDare has an interesting piece today on why the GOP can't play the Democrats' game and win:
" As I forecast, the Democrats have duly offered to not only give all illegal aliens amnesty, but also to put them on the road to citizenship… and, thus, to being good little Democrats. [...] The whole thing offers the Dems some slam-dunk soundbites. For example, Rep. Bob Menendez, one of bill's sponsors, said Bush's proposal 'is a pathway to deportation. This is a pathway to the American dream'."
This should give pause even to the immigration enthusiast wing of the Party.
[ note: I see that progcal has finally begun responding to my case for immigration restriction. I will have more once the response is complete (so far, they've touched on three out of my eight theses; they promise to address them all). For the moment, an early verdict: response i) conveniently ignores the most recent evidence; response ii) depends entirely on evidence provided by the paid hacks of the immigration establishment; response iii) conflates over-population with the issue of historic scale, and thus fails to engage with the question. As I said, more later.]
Sunday, May 09, 2004:
POR LA RAZA NADA!
Fellow BFL blogger Michael Williams reports that Stanford students have voted to deny funding to Stanford MEChA after the Stanford Review ran a series of articles critical of the group's ugly irredentist agenda. The Washington Times has since picked up the story:
" In what is believed to be the first such vote on any college campus, Stanford students voted 1,357 to 1,329 to withhold MEChA's special fees, which amount to more than $40,000."
Stanford MEChA is down. Unfortunately, it is not out:
" The vote doesn't mean the end of Stanford MEChA. With a total budget of about $100,000, the organization also receives funding from the academic departments, the Stanford Fund and El Centro Chicano, the school's Hispanic umbrella group, according to the Review."
For MEChA related news and opinion, see here and here. One hopes that the Cal Patriot types out there know how to take a hint...
[ update: checking the Cal Patriot site, I see that Alisa Farenzena touches upon the issue of MEChA funding in the course of her touchingly naive discussion of the diversity hoax.]
[ update update: I also notice that Caljunket and Cal Patriot Watch have nicely overhauled site format. Perhaps we should consider doing the same...]
desultory sunday news roundup...
Those of you keen on the sex-with-captives story may wish to have a look at Belmont Club's recent post on the similarities between incidents at Abu Ghraib and the Eastern European sex trade:
" The images from Abu Ghraib are trophy pictures. The sadistic MPs are shown posing, smiling, and gloating over their victims and what they have made them do. Similarly, I found numerous offers on the Internet from pimps for men to bring cameras and video recorders with them to make trophy images and videos of their sexual use of women and girls."
In a related story, it appears that Kosovo's multinational peacekeepers (KFOR), when not not keeping the peace, have been busily transgressing with teenage sex slaves.
Critical Mass has more worrisome news for the would-be lawyers amongst you. Boalt Hall also gains her attention. It seems that the retards up the hill just can't keep their feet out of other people's mouths. As you know, we at Berkeley are very concerned about civil liberties.
Eventually this kind of stuff makes you brain dead. So I will let Eugene Volokh make the appropriate sounds for me:
" If the vague phrase 'racist, sexist or homophobic expressions' is defined as anything beyond slurs or utterly irrelevant asides, I mentioned, such a prohibition could seriously interfere with free and open class discussion. And if the speech here -- the speech that is prompting the policy -- is an example of the kind of 'racist . . . expressions' that they're trying to suppress, then my fears seem in danger of being realized."
Moore Part II
This "censorship" issue reminded me of something I read in the Feb 16 & 23 issue of the New Yorker. Larissa MacFarquhar, in a piece on Moore which, I confess, caused me to be even more disgusted with him than I had been, says this about Mikey: (I can't find a link so I transcribe)
[After being fired as editor of Mother Jones Magazine, Moore] told the Times that he was being punished because he opposed running a piece by the writer Paul Berman that was somewhat critical of the Sandinistas' human-rights record in Nicaragua. Adam Hochschild, the chairman of the foundation that owns the magazine, said that he had asked Moore to leave because of inadequate job performance (staff members said he was impossible to work with). After he was fired, Moore held a press conference on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco at which he read aloud from a draft of Berman's article to show how appalling it was. He went on the radio and accused Berman of not speaking Spanish well enough, of not knowing who among the Sandinistas was a Marxist-Leninist and who wasn't, and, more generally, of being a traitor to the left and giving aid and comfort to Reagan. At the time, the Sandinista solidarity movement was a commanding force on the left, one that had divided suspicious human-rights liberals from those who were so horrified by Reagan's support of the Contras that they gave Sandinistas the benefit of any doubt. The latter group was not particularly interested in dissenting views, and Berman soon became a pariah. (My emphasis).
Hmmmm. Remember everyone: when Mikey gets canned it is censorship. When someone critical of Mikey's position gets canned it is editorializing.
RE: RAPE, TORTURE, PEDOPHILIA?
What interests me most is the origin of all these photographs. Even if the soldiers are telling the truth and they didn't know that this sort of behavior was illegal, surely they must have had some notion that it might be broadly defined as "wrong." What would possess these people to document themselves raping Iraqi prisoners? And even granting some warped logic, it seems that they would have taken certain precautions to make sure that these photos never saw the light of day. Something's fishy.
Update
Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker thinks that the prevalence of photographs was an attempt by the military personnel to maximize humiliation.
The photographing of prisoners, both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, seems to have been not random but, rather, part of the dehumanizing interrogation process. The Times published an interview last week with Hayder Sabbar Abd, who claimed, convincingly, to be one of the mistreated Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib photographs. Abd told Ian Fisher, the Times reporter, that his ordeal had been recorded, almost constantly, by cameras, which added to his humiliation. He remembered how the camera flashed repeatedly as soldiers told to him to masturbate and beat him when he refused.
Sounds reasonable to me.
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