Harvard’s endowment generated another 23% return on investment in the year ending in June 2007, so, along with new gifts, the university’s endowment has reached $34.9 billion, up from about $7 billion just twelve years ago.

In other words, Harvard doesn’t need any more money. But, it will keep getting more money, because everybody loves a winner.

Donors should realize that they get a bigger bang for their buck by donating to think tanks — literally, in the case of the American Enterprise Institute, which was the epicenter of the Iraq Attaq whooping, and is trying to be the same thing for Bomb Bomb Iran.

Here’s an excerpt from the American Enterprise Institute’s press release on the retirement of their head, Christopher DeMuth:

“AEI grew from a budget of $7.7 million in 1987 to $23.6 million in 2006. AEI has operated at a surplus of revenues over expenses throughout his tenure, with an average annual surplus of more than $1 million. The Institute was $9 million in debt when Mr. DeMuth arrived; today its net asset balance is $76 million, with additional outstanding financial pledges exceeding $60 million.”

So, $76 million is just a little over 1/2000th of Harvard’s $35 billion. Now Harvard has lots of things that AEI doesn’t have, but, let me ask you this: Does it have its own war?

I rest my case.

What would be even more efficient than donating to a think tank, however, would be personalized patronage. For example, how many people in America are rich enough to pay Greg Cochran enough money so he could stop engineering state of the art telescopes for a living and concentrate on his research, scientific and strategic? And maybe enough for him to hire a bright young local lad, such as Thrasymachus, as an assistant?

Similarly, the operating deficit of political magazines and webzines is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast amount flowing to Ivy League colleges, but with much more impact on the world.

As usual, American families bear the brunt of President Bush’s open-border obsession. The most recent case is that of the Texas girls who were brutally gang-raped and murdered in 1993. Mexico’s man in the White House is putting foreign interests first, by insisting that one of the gang that killed them not be put down.

Two devastated families will not receive justice if Bush gets his way, and the execution of illegal alien Jose Medellin is overturned. The father of Jennifer Ertman was recently interviewed on Fox News and he understands exactly what is going on. (The other victim pictured is Elizabeth Pena, on the right.)

The father of a 14-year-old Texas girl who was raped, sodomized and then strangled with a belt and shoe laces, wants to know why President Bush supports halting the execution of the Mexican national who confessed to killing his daughter and her friend.

“Our daughters are just pawns in a game that we have no control over,” Randy Ertman, father of Jennifer Ertman, told FOX News. “What can I say to the president of the United States or the Supreme Court that would make any difference?”

In addition, the case has huge implications for the rule of law and American sovereignty. If a foreign tribunal can overturn the decisions of citizen juries, then we are far down the road to unelected global government.

Too bad our “conservative” president is supporting this garbage. He took the extreme step of ordering Texas courts to review ALL capital cases of Mexican nationals. But as President, he has nothing to say over what the judicial branch does, as many critics have noted.

REP. TED POE (R), TEXAS: Well, Lou, it seems it me that under the separation of powers, the president hasn’t — does not have any authority over any court to tell them what to do. 



And the highest court in Texas recently ruled, in all respect to the president, that he has no jurisdiction in this matter at all. And that’s why this case is before the Supreme Court. 



And certainly, the U.S. Constitution takes precedent over international law and especially in this specific case, and the case should, obviously, be upheld by the Supreme Court. 

[Lou Dobbs Tonight Transcript 10/10/07]

On cue, President Bush celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House Wednesday.

Crops Rotting in the Fields! … Oh wait. That’s last year’s crops-rot-in-fields story. Sorry. Here’s this year’s. They haven’t rotted yet…Kausfiles.com

It’s October, and for the benefit of sophisticated urbanites at the Manhattan Institute, Washington Post, and New York Times, crops are not gonna rot in the fields because they’ve already been picked, almost everywhere in the nation. (Certainly in the San Joaquin Valley, where Joe Guzzardi lives.)

Kaus also points something out about the LA Times story George Borjas linked to earlier:

I can see why it might be useful to simplify applications. But if it’s seasonal work, why would it be necessary to “extend the definition of ‘temporary’ beyond 10 months”? Do all these legal workers actually return when their “temporary” work is over?…

Here’s the answer, once again from our San Joaquin Valley correspondent, Joe Guzzardi:

The annual highlight in my hometown is the Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair held in mid-September. For decades the last day had been dedicated to Mexicans. The original concept was that since the grapes had been harvested and the workers were about to return to Mexico, the city would honor their contribution by setting aside a special day for them.

Now, of course, no one goes home.VDARE.com: 09/14/05 - Diversity Is Weakness—Even At State Fairs

American politicians and federal officials are still trying to get straight in their heads that confusing Shia vs. Sunni thingie, but it turns out that the Middle East has a whole bunch of living religions that aren’t exactly part of Islam, Christianity, or Judaism.

Sure, we’ve all heard of the Samaritans in Israel, the mysterious and pugnacious Druze of Lebanon, the heretical Alawites who rule Syria, the Lucifer-worshipping Yezidis of Kurdistan, the millions of angel-worshipping Alevi of Turkey, and the Donme, the crypto-Jewish followers of the False Messiah who wield much influence in modern Istanbul.

But according to this NYT oped “Save the Gnostics,” in 2003 there were also 50,000 Gnostics, known as Mandaeans, who lived in Southern Iraq. They revere Adam, Noah and John the Baptist, and reject Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. Wikipedia informs us, “While they agree with other gnostic sects that the world is a prison governed by the planetary archons, they do not view it as a cruel and inhospitable one.” So, they’ve got that going for them, which is nice…

Wait a minute, did that just say “planetary archons?”

A planetary archon, it appears, is a demiurge, in-between humans and God, who created and rules the world, and does a pretty bad job of it. (It’s basically the same idea as John Tierney’s recent NYT article hypothesizing that our universe is just a simulation game, like World of Warcraft, being played by some superintelligent computer geek somewhere.) The point of the Gnosis or secret knowledge is to get around the layers of bureaucracy in the middle and talk directly to God.

But now thanks to America spreading democracy to Iraq, the Gnostics are being persecuted by the Shia Muslims and are fleeing to Syria. Whether they blame their fate on America or on a planetary archon is not specified. (Better not mention this term to Bill Kristol or he’ll make it the basis of his whole political platform and worldview. The Weekly Standard will run cover stories on “America’s Destiny: Apocalypse or Planetary Archonship? We Must Choose Now!”)

Meanwhile, at GNXP, Razib chips in with “Obscure Middle Eastern religious cults - part n,” in which he unveils the million or so people in Iran who are called various names: Yarsan/Yaresan, Kakeyi, Ahl-e Haqq or Ahl-i Haqq. They believe in reincarnation.

In the comments on GNXP, tommy asks about the Shabak near Mosul, who appear to be sort of like the Yazidis, but also like kind of Muslims, except they drink alcohol and have their own sacred book, written in Turkoman. The Sunnis are beheading them in large numbers.

Are we totally sure we knew what we were getting into over there?

VDARE.COM contributor Ilana Mercer will be a guest today, Thursday, on the “I Object! Justice Examined” broadcast by the Right Talk radio network and hosted by Jerri Lynn Ward.

Mercer will be talking about the Supreme Court case involving Mexican illegal alien Jose Ernesto Medellin who raped and murdered two young girls. VDARE.COM editor Athena Kerry wrote an October 9th blog on Bush’s interference in the case. Legal details are in this Washington Post story.

Listen here to Mercer’s interview here.The show airs at 3PM EDT and replays over the next 23 hours.

But, as Herman Belz, author of that unheralded masterpiece Equality Transformed, observes, “Since 1966, the underlying purpose of the [federal civil rights] test guidelines was to place enough obstacles in the way of employee selection so that employees would choose to hire by race rather than objective criteria of merit.” Since blacks and Hispanics tend to score significantly lower on written tests of cognitive ability than do whites, the OFCCP routinely presumes that practically any written test can be evidence of discrimination. Indeed, the OFCCP Compliance Manual is written based on the assumption that any hiring standards that do not generate the correct diversity of employees is presumptively illegal. In the agency’s view, the fact that a company believes its workers need to read at a certain level is an injustice to every illiterate person who applies for the job.
[Here Comes the Goon Squad, By James Bovard, The American Spectator, July, 1996]

This, of course, is one of the major reasons why we can’t ignore group differences in IQ, even if we wanted to. Bovard also quotes from When quotas replace merit, everybody suffers , [by Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer Forbes, 1993]which why I headlined this “Quota Of The Day.”