In the pre-purge National Review, Dinesh D’Souza published Myth of the Racist Cabbie, [October 9, 1995]which argued that when taxi-drivers refused to pick up young black men in New York they were acting on a perfectly justifiable fear of death. [There's more on page 58 and 59 of Paved With Good Intentions.]

The dangers of being murdered are statistically easy to prove, because, as Steve Sailer put it recently, “attention must be paid to a dead body.”

But there was a further claim in D’Souza’s article: “[M]any groused that African-American passengers frequently leave no tip. ”

This, if true, is more likely to affect driver behavior than muggings, for complex economic reasons. But it’s one of those things that’s difficult to prove. It doesn’t exactly show up in the FBI crime reports.

Recently, however, there’s been a study by some economists that actually does seem to prove it:To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping, by Ian Ayres, Fredrick E. Vars, and Nasser Zakariya.

We collected data on over 1000 taxicab rides in New Haven, CT in 2001. After controlling for a host of other variables, we find two potential racial disparities in tipping: (1) African-American cab drivers were tipped approximately one-third less than white cab drivers; and (2) African-American passengers tipped approximately one-half the amount of white passengers (African-American passengers are 3.7 times more likely than white passengers to leave no tip).

Many studies have documented seller discrimination against consumers, but this study tests and finds that consumers discriminate based on the seller’s race. African-American passengers also participated in the racial discrimination. While African-American passengers generally tipped less, they also tipped black drivers approximately one-third less than they tipped white drivers.

This is a fascinating example of “stereotype accuracy, ” black-on-black racism, and unregulated human interaction.

Hat, er, tip, to Tyler Cowen at a Marginal Revolution , who pointed out that ” the authors wish to ban tipping [NB: they call it mandatory tipping] to limit racism.”

(The title of this post is from a Louis Jordan song.)

Fernando Peons Aguero was born in Tijuana, Mexico.

In 1985 he was found guilty of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14 in Los Angeles County.

He served one year in prison before being released.

Last Friday, Aguero kidnapped 8 year-old Lydia Rupp from her home in Fernley, Nevada.

Over the weekend, Aguero crossed back over the border into Mexico taking Lydia with him.

A convicted sex-offender, an immigrant from Mexico has abducted a little girl and we have nobody to blame but ourselves…

When will the MSM et al. cease with the whole “immigrants are just workers trying to support their families” bilge?

Better yet, when will Americans stop buying it?

Read story here.

In a fine piece of political journalism, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that massive funding is being raised by White House lobbyist allies. The purpose: to revive the GWB January 2004 proposal to broaden and accelerate the inflow of immigrants into America.

Immigration Rising on Bush’s To-Do List - The White House wants to build a coalition to court Latinos and marginalize hard-liners -by Peter Wallsten and Nicole Gaouette Los Angeles Times July 24 2005 [Access reguires free registration]:

…the White House is working with political strategists to create a broad coalition of business groups and immigrant advocates to back a plan President Bush could promote in Congress and to minority voters in the 2006 elections…the White House hopes to reinvigorate the drive for new immigration laws — but this time it wants to work in advance to ensure that the president is backed by a broad alliance of business and advocacy groups.

This is going to be quite a gravy train for those who can get their snouts on board:

Corporations and advocacy groups with a direct interest in immigration — including those who need skilled high-tech workers, farm laborers and university teaching assistants — are being aggressively targeted for membership. Those being courted include Microsoft Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and groups representing academic institutions, restaurants, hotels, landscaping firms, hospitals and nurses. Organizers say this is the first time an effort has been made to bring these disparate groups together to focus on immigration issues.
Admission into the new coalition costs between $50,000 and $250,000…

(My emphasis.) The ostensible rationale, of course, is the old inanity about the Republican need to get more of the Hispanic vote, so decisively refuted on VDARE.com by Steve Sailer and others. Can there be left a political operative in DC who can maintain , with a straight face, that the way to bolster the Republicans is to import more of a population, about which the only question is how close to the 60/40 landslide benchmark it votes Democratic? If it votes at all.

The Republicans won the 2004 election by the surreptitious adoption of the Sailer Strategy: Get out the white vote. Even some of those who know they run risks saying it have been forthright that the ‘04 Bush Amnesty proposal infuriated this group.

The LA Times allows U.S. Rep Tom Tancredo to devastate this silly argument:

Tancredo accused the administration of forging an alliance with business executives who view migrants as a path to greater profits “They know this has nothing to do with Hispanic votes…They’re trying to cover what their real motive is, which is to supply [business] with cheap labor, to not close the spigot of cheap labor”

Why is the Bush Administration so determined on this path? There is of course the view that the Bush family and the Texan plutocracy envy the status of the Mexican aristocracy, serenely floating above a sea of exploitable, repressible peasants. They want to merge! Certainly their enthusiasm for transforming America is breathtaking.

What is clear is that many in the Beltway do not believe America is a Democracy.

Consider this gem from one of the key fund raising lobbyists:

There’s two voices right now, and the noisy one is what I call the slam-the-borders crowd…The voice we want to speak with — and the one that will be in unison with President Bush — is the voice that echoes those marvelous words on the Statue of Liberty.To me, the Tancredo wing appeals to the more prurient character of our nature…We want to talk to the better angels of our nature.

(My emphasis.) Disgusting lower-class Americans obscenely interested in the living standards and conditions their children will face! Ugh!

That is former U.S. Representative Dick Armey, Republican House Majority Leader 1995-2003. Apparently in that capacity he did not learn that Emma Lazarus was not one of the Founding Fathers, and that her scrap of verse is not an article of the Constitution.

Here is a more intelligent - and more ominous - comment from Craig Regelbrugge, a lobbyist for the American Nursery & Landscape Association. He fears being shortchanged in this Lobbyist/White House shakedown and said that

Bush would succeed in forging partnerships with business only once he felt comfortable angering some parts of his base. “You’re never going to please them all,…That’s the difficult thing for the White House on this. They don’t want to anger anyone. But the party’s going to have to choose between the closed-minded restrictionists and the business base…. Who’s really the base of the base? Farmers and businesspeople, or the others?”

That is the point of course. Who is the base, a.k.a. the Nation. Citizens, or a miasma of financial interests? Tell Regelbrugge.