Most Vdare readers are aware that the Bush budget massively reduced the Congressional level of Border Patrol increases from 2,000 yearly to 210. In addition, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which reimburses states for illegal alien incarceration costs—aka SCAAP—has been sent to the scrap heap.

But some items chosen for Bush largesse should also raise eyebrows for the concerned taxpayer. Here are a selected few:

• Mexico is receiving $5 million to “improve the justice system” around Juarez, particularly to help solve the brutal murders of hundreds of women. However, other American efforts around this human rights disaster in 2002 and 2003 came up zero. Of course, Mexico Is Rich, and could easily afford its own police work.
• Washington proposes to provide Palestinian terrorists with retirement money, as part of a $350 million package to the ultra-corrupt Palestinian Authority. Retired murderers will receive $100 per month under the Bush plan.
• The current commitment of $350 million for tsunami aid apparently isn’t generous enough for the world’s superpower, so Bush is requesting another $600, bringing the total to $950 million. (National Debt Clock.)

And for a final blow, Bush is pulling the plug on one of the few government endeavors which can truly be called inspiring, the Hubble Space Telescope.

Tony Blair is talking about reducing immigration, which has been a huge problem in the UK for years, and years, and years. However, he has economic worries:

the Prime Minister said that it was the Bank of England’s view that inward migration had had a positive impact on the economy.

He added that new immigration controls announced yesterday by Home Secretary Charles Clarke had been designed to ensure that the prospects for economic growth would not be damaged.

The idea that immigration is necessary to economic growth is an often-refuted canard. And it’s a lame excuse for not doing something about mass immigration.

Blair is a Labour Prime Minister, and as such, should be willing to preside over the total destruction of the British economy, as his predecessors did.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an economist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and a brilliant libertarian polemicist in German and English, whose last book, Democracy: The God that Failed, has created excitement here and in Europe, Hoppe’s work defends immigration restriction and free trade, among other things. Last year, Hoppe offended the Thought Police on his campus by noting that homosexuals (like other groups, such as the very young and very old) plan less for the future than heterosexuals. This fleeting observation in a 75-minute lecture led gay activists to demand the university authorities punish Hoppe for violating protected group rights. Now the university is proposing to reprimand him and withhold his next pay increase. The ACLU (!) has ridden to his defense, on the grounds that whatever gay might claim for themselves, their “protection” does not take precedence over freedom of speech, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal has described him as “a world-renowned economist, author and speaker.” Stay tuned.