My hometown propaganda rag, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, runs an “Atlanta and the World” section of six to eight pages each Wednesday.

To say that it is an effective way of shamelessly disseminating leftist open borders propaganda to the barely aware daily readership of a million plus readers is an understatement. As an example, I offer one of my favorite, front page Atlanta and the World stories from July:

“Immigrants subsidize care” …with a sub header: “Medical study debunks myth on health costs”

in which the AJC presents a convoluted study [“The study,makes no distinction among U.S. citizens. Legal residents and un-documented immigrants”] that apparently proves that given enough immigration, American health costs would decrease to zero.

A quote from Dr. Sarita A. Mohanty, who was involved in the study in the AJC

“We felt there was a misconception about the amount of health care immigrants were using nationwide,” said Dr. Sarita A. Mohanty, the study’s lead author, who moved from Harvard to the University of Southern California while it was in press.”

Not so objective an approach?

From the AJC:

But the study’s authors, who based their analysis on federally collected health care data, said it debunks a persistent myth: That extending medical care to immigrants has contributed to the United States’ out-of-control health care costs

The basis of the study?

The study examined medical-spending data on 21,241 people gathered by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality during 1998. [Health Care Expenditures of Immigrants in the United States: A Nationally Representative Analysis August 2005, Vol 95, No. 8 | American Journal of Public Health ]

So…in a nation of 290 million plus, the study uses data from 21,000 people collected eight years ago. No mention of Dr. Madeleine Cosman’s study [PDF] published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons…this year.

I failed to note all of this in July, but was reminded of it today when I read another piece in Atlanta and the World this morning regarding that all-American outfit, MALDEF.

The AJC, again, was selective in information provided to the reader that MALDEF sued in several federal courts to stop Arizona’s Prop 200 legislation that requires proof of citizenship [ Oh, the humanity!] to vote in that state, or that it joined forces with other race-based organizations to oppose the federal REAL ID ACT…regulating driver’s licenses to illegal aliens being a human rights abuse you understand.

Let’s not overlook the fact that the AJC Chaired the annual 2003MALDEF fundraiser dinner here , or that it did not report on the American citizens and real, legal immigrants protesting just outside that event…

Voter ID that proves citizenship and requires a photo to vote does not seem to be an issue with MALDEF, or with Cynthia Tucker at the AJC when it occurs in Mexico.

Si?

This is why immigration enthusiasts scream “racist” all the time: they know their support is a mile wide but not an inch deep - even in the American Establishment. The October 3 issue of U.S. New & World Report carries a worthy hand-wringing column from the proprietor, Mortimer Zuckerman, on the plight of black America as revealed by Hurricane Katrina. Buried deep in it is this remarkable thowaway paragraph:

So why haven’t overall poverty rates declined further? In a word, immigration. Many of those who come to the United States are not only poor but unskilled. Hispanics account for much of the increase in poverty–no surprise, since 25 percent of poor people are Hispanic. Since 1989, Hispanics represent nearly three quarters of the increase in the overall poverty population. Immigration has also helped keep the median income for the country basically flat for five straight years, the longest stretch of income stagnation on record.

This, of course, is the sort of thing that VDARE.COM, specifically Edwin S. Rubenstein, has beeen saying for years. e.g. here.

Even more remarkable, this is not new for Zuckerman. He and I were on a panel together in New York in 1994 (hard to believe now) and I remember telling him I would not have strained my family’s patience writing Alien Nation, then in press, if I had seen a wonderful U.S. News column he had just published succinctly summarizing the immigration disaster. Yeah, maybe you say this sort of thing to media moguls, but, partly because my wife was still steaming with rage, I meant it.

I don’t know for sure why Zuckerman’s stone-cold take on immigration isn’t reflected in his New York Daily News or for that matter why he doesn’t force his employee Michael Barone to stop his, ah, systematic inexactitude on the issue.

But the immigration enthusiasts don’t know either. That’s why they have to repress all criticism with such hysteria.