17 December 2007

Deirdre McCloskey Endorses The Wisdom of Repugnance; or, Too Many Damn Steves!

[Steve Sailer] @ 11:16 pm [Email author] [Email This Article]  Print This Post Print This Post

Deirdre McCloskey, who is probably the most prominent female economist in America, issues a peeved review of economic historian Gregory Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.” Dr. McCloskey writes:

“Clark most engagingly summarizes an enormous scientific literature, and if he gets any substantial number of noneconomic intellectuals innocent of economic history to grasp what we other students of such matters all know happened 1600 to the present we will in our great-heartedness forgive him for the rest. The trouble with this hope is that his distinctive hypothesis is going to appeal only to the Steve Sailers, Stephen Pinkers, and Seth Roberts of the world and is going to repel everyone else.”

It’s amusing to hear the former Donald McCloskey, of all people, appeal to what Leon Kass calls “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”

By the way, I don’t know who Seth Roberts is, but the story behind McCloskey lumping “the Steve Sailers” and “Stephen [sic] Pinkers” together is that McCloskey is part of a cabal of high IQ transsexuals, including Lynn Conway (pictured here next to Brent Scowcroft) and Joan Roughgarden, who have waged a vicious smear campaign against Northwestern U. psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Bailey’s unforgivable sin was publishing a book that included a theory of transsexualism at odds with the I-always-felt-like-a-little-girl-inside story promoted in public by most transsexual intellectuals, such as McCloskey, who was the captain of his high school football team.

As part of their jihad, McCloskey and Co. have tried to smear anybody, such as Pinker or myself, who has ever written anything positive about Bailey. Not surprisingly, the transsexuals teamed up with the Southern Poverty Law Center in their attempt to shut down all heresy on the subject and wreck the careers of anyone sympathetic toward Bailey. The New York Times exposed the nastiness of McCloskey and Co.’s censorship and guilt-by-association campaign earlier this year.

Mary Rose Wilcox And Radical Hispanics Evict Patriots

[Rob Sanchez] @ 9:08 pm [Email author] [Email This Article]  Print This Post Print This Post

I saw the damndest thing the evening of December 13. I attended an open town hall meeting in Phoenix. It was called by the Hispanic political leadership in the Phoenix community to discuss and address Mayor Gordon’s reversed stance on Operational Order 1.4.3, [PDF]the police regulation that forbids Phoenix police from asking the immigration status of suspected criminals. This order is what makes Phoenix a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.

Mary Rose Wilcox - Supervisor, Dist. 5 - Maricopa County [Email her]started the meeting out as moderator but didn’t say the “Pledge of Allegiance”. The few of us Americans that were there shouted “we want to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the USA”.

Wilcox refused to do it. Then about 8-9 patriots (Freedom Riders, Minutemen etc) stood up behind me and started to recite the Pledge. Wilcox ordered the patriots to be evicted.

The angry crowed turned around towards us and chanted “throw them out! throw them out!” I was scared to death, and finally understood what it’s like to be face-to-face with communists. I’m not joking either — these people are radical and they hate Americans.

Suddenly goons wearing yellow shirts from the UFCWIU labor union swarmed the patriots who were saying the pledge. The Phoenix Police stood behind the goons with billy clubs ready to swing if someone refused to go. All of the patriots who stood up to say the Pledge were evicted, while Wilcox and the four panel members watched. One by one during the meeting more patriots were evicted. Not a single Latino was evicted, even when they shouted at us that we were KKK, racists, etc. Basically anyone who dissented from their open-border radicalism was evicted.

I stayed for the next 3 hours. It didn’t get better! Until the last 15 minutes, not one opposing voice was heard – every single speaker was a radical Hispanic activist, except for the few liberal whites and a whacky Al Sharpton sound-alike. The Al Sharpton guy looked towards us and said all of “those people” that want to stop immigration are Jim Crows. Well gee, I’m not sure how he knew what we wanted considering none of us were allowed to speak.

The bottom line for these people: the consider being an illegal alien to be a “petty low level misdemeanor”, and they thought that immigration status should never be asked, no matter what the crime. Every single speaker accused “those people” of spewing race, hatred, and fear, but that’s all I ever heard for three hours. These people are full of venom and hate for non-Hispanics.

The only reason that they allowed two people to speak who oppose 1.4 was because Grant Woods (panel member) made a comment that only one point of view is being heard. Woods may have been embarrassed by the fact that he was participating in such a transparent charade.

There are two videos you can watch, linked below, but don’t expect them to be very informative. As usual the local media wants to make us look like the nuts. Don’t believe it folks, the crazies were the ones who hate the USA, like Mary Rose Wilcox.

Iowa Smoke and Mirrors and Immigration

[Randall Burns] @ 4:21 pm [Email author] [Email This Article]  Print This Post Print This Post

From a recent CBS poll:

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WORKING IN US? GOP IA Caucus likely attendees IA Voters
Keep jobs, apply for citizenship 29% 41%
Keep jobs only as guest workers 24 23
Leave jobs, leave U.S. entirely 44 34

NO MATTER WHOM YOU SUPPORT, WHICH CANDIDATE…?
(Among likely Republican caucus-goers)

Agrees w/you Is best on Is most electable on Immigration
Romney 30% 26%
Huckabee 8 13
Giuliani 38 9
Thompson 6 5
McCain 3 4
Tancredo 1 15
Paul 2 4
Hunter 0 2

Now, looking at simple arithmetic, Tancredo, Paul and Hunter all have clearly better than average records on immigration. They might actually be willing to deport illegal aliens if elected. Thompson, despite a penchant for H-1b money and a mediocre voting record on immigration, has at least learned to talk tough on the issue of immigration.

Still, what this means is that 18% of the 44% of GOP voters that favor deportation actually think that either Huckabee, McCain, Romney or Giuliani might actually do something close to deportation of illegal aliens if elected.

Now, first off, Romney likes guest worker visas–as we might expect from a rich man with a remarkable ability to take self-serving moral positions. Huckabee has clearly endorsed expansion of guest worker visas.

From Huckabee’s site:

“Increase visas for highly-skilled and highly-educated applicants.
Expedite processing for those who serve honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Improve our immigration process so that those patiently and responsibly seeking to come here legally will not have to wait decades to share in the American dream.”

“Propose to provide all illegal immigrants a 120-day window to register with the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and leave the country. Those who register and return to their home country will face no penalty if they later apply to immigrate or visit; those who do not return home will be, when caught, barred from future reentry for a period of 10 years.”

Now, what is important here:Huckbee has one of the most anti-immigration constituencies of any major candidate. It looks like a big chunk of the electorate are getting snowed by Huckbee and Romney’s statements on immigration simply because as governors they having little in the way of voting records on the topic-and most voters can’t look at stuff like who these people tended to support politically-and who supports them.

Huckabee at least admits he doesn’t understand the immigration issue-and the intensity behind it. Ryan Lizza quotes Mike Huckabee in the New Yorker:

But Huckabee’s excitement was tempered by Romney’s persistent attacks on his immigration record as governor of Arkansas, and he seemed to be grappling with the intensity of the question among Republicans. “It does appear to be the issue out here wherever we are,” he told me. “Nobody’s asked about Iraq—doesn’t ever come up. The first question out of the box, everywhere I go—Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, it doesn’t matter—is immigration. It’s just red hot, and I don’t fully understand it.”

I think part of the problem may be in how we in the non-corporate press have analyzed immigration. Hispanic immigration, largely Asian high-tech guest worker immigration and chain migration(of fiancées and relatives–the biggest job category of which is “housewife”) are lumped into the immigration issue–but they all have rather different dynamics.

Still, there is a fundamental issue of denial on just how important the immigration issue is-and how hard it will be to really address the issue. If Huckabee or Romney are elected president, I fully expect to see a significant expansion of Guest Worker Visas–and worsening job prospects for Americans–particularly young and poor Americans. The simple fact is that most Americans want less immigration-even if they don’t want poor people people to pay the price of a transition to such a policy.

If Huckabee or Romney are elected, I fully expect the Republican party will be even further discredited, and that issue of jobs will become an even more important Democratic issue, and more Democrats will get even cooler on corporate sponsored immigration.

Crackdown On Organized Crime Protested By Mafia–No, Wait…

[James Fulford] @ 9:50 am [Email author] [Email This Article]  Print This Post Print This Post

Not quite, the headline ia actually

Arizona squeeze on immigration angers business
By Miriam Jordan
The Wall Street Journal
Dec. 14, 2007 09:40 AM
PHOENIX - Arizona businesses are firing Hispanic immigrants, moving operations to Mexico and freezing expansion plans ahead of a new law that cracks down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

The law, set to take effect on Jan. 1, thrusts Arizona into the heart of the national debate on illegal immigration, which has become a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail. Republican candidates, in particular, have been battling to show how tough they are on the issue.

Arizona’s law, believed to be the strictest in the nation, is shaping up as a test of how employers will react when faced with real sanctions for hiring undocumented labor. It is being closely watched by businesses across the country. While proponents say the crackdown will save the state money on services for illegal immigrants, some businesspeople fear Arizona’s economic growth may be at risk.
Under the law, people will be encouraged to contact a county sheriff’s or county attorney’s office to report businesses they suspect of employing an illegal immigrant. After the sheriff investigates, the county attorney can then seek to suspend and ultimately revoke the business license of an employer who knowingly hires an illegal immigrant. The measure would also require all Arizona businesses to use E-Verify, a federal online database, to confirm that new hires have valid Social Security numbers and are eligible for employment.[More]

Of course, the basic principle here is that businesses that employ illegals profit from illegal immigration, American workers and taxpayers suffer. Now the taxpayers of Arizona have voted to stop it. There are non-economic costs to massive Hispanic immigration, of course. See