How typical of the LA Times to treat reduced illegal entry as a quasi-sob story, starting with the headline — “The undocumented hesitate to enter a less-alluring U.S.” (Dec 26)

The lame journalism aside, Mexicans are apparently beginning to question whether America is still a full trough of goodies for them. The news doesn’t get much better than that, even though a large part of the reason for Mexican reluctance is our slowing economy, as well as tougher enforcement in places like Arizona.

• A recent survey by Mexican authorities shows that fewer Mexicans say they are planning to seek work outside the country. In the third quarter of 2007, about 47,000 said they’d be packing their bags. That’s down nearly one-third from the same quarter a year earlier.

However, la Times has a funny way of looking at statistics: it’s the old reduction-of-increase trick (used often in Congressional budget propaganda): the speed at which spending of some sort is not expanding at the earlier rate, so therefore the sky is falling. Wrong. Mexico is still getting over $20 billion annually in remittances, a sum made possible by American taxpayers being forced to pay for illegals’ welfare.

• The growth in remittances sent to Mexico has dwindled to a trickle. Through October of this year, Mexicans living abroad sent $20.4 billion home to their families, a 1.3% increase over the same period in 2006, according to Mexico’s central bank. Those sums were growing in excess of 20% annually just a few years ago.

As I wrote in Financial Bloodsucking Update, even a top Mexican banker now recognizes that the easy money of remittances has turned the country into a national welfare queen, too lazy to invest in its own endeavors. Why spend Mexican pesos on educating the kiddies, Mex-elites figure, when they are more profitable as illiterate expats, sending back billions of dollars?

This is from Hans Bader at the OpenMarket.org blog

Employers are often quite gullible about the claims made by “diversity” trainers.  For example, they permit minority trainers to promote racial stereotypes that would provoke outrage if they were subsequently repeated by white managers or employees.  For example, Glenn Singleton, a wealthy “diversity” trainer, teaches that “white talk” is “impersonal, intellectual, verbal” and “task-oriented,” while “color commentary” is “emotional.” 

If a white person said this, it would rightly be regarded as a ridiculous, racist stereotype that relegates black people to inferior status.  But because Singleton himself is African-American, and he sugarcoats his racist stereotypes about black people by coupling them with ideologically trendy attacks on white people (whom he depicts as “impersonal” and “racist”), liberal school superintendents eat it up. [Diversity Training Backfires | OpenMarket.org]

This is correct–to the extent that such stereotypes are true, (and all stereotypes have some truth in them) Steve Sailer has been attacked for saying some of the same things Singleton is saying. However, Steve isn’t trying to relegate  ” black people to inferior status,” but pointing out that different groups have different strengths. Glenn Singleton,[send him mail] by contrast, is trying say that blacks are superior.

Michael of 2Blowhards writes:

I’ve derived more knowledge, information, provocation, and entertainment from reading Steve in recent years than I have from looking at the NYTimes and The New Yorker combined. Let’s keep Steve hard at work.

So, to be able to keep writing, I’m appealing to you once again to be generous.

There are four ways to give me money.

First, if you’ve been thinking, gee, I’ve had too much income in 2007 for tax purposes, do I have a deal for you! You can make credit card contributions here (click on the first “Make a Donation” button you come to on the screen); or fax credit card details here (please put my name on the fax); or you can snail mail checks made out to “VDARE Foundation” and marked on the memo line (lower left corner) “Steve Sailer” to:

VDARE Foundation
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Second: You can send me an email and I’ll send you my P.O. Box address.

Third: You can use Amazon. Just click here. The limit on the amount in a single donation via Amazon, for some reason, is $50.

Fourth: You can use Paypal, either by just using any credit card or if you have a specific Paypal account. Just click here and got to the Paypal link on my own site, fill in your credit card info on the left (scroll down to bottom left-center to go on) or your Paypal ID on the right. It works fine with the mainstream MS Internet Explorer browser.

Unfortunately, I can’t figure out how to get the link to Paypal working with the Firefox browser. If you know, please email me.

Thanks.

This is a list of some of the vandalism cited by the Catholic League–they don’t provide details for most of the occurrences, but see below:

Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights
MANGER SCENES VANDALIZED

December 19, 2007

Today, the Catholic League erected a nativity scene in Central Park. Unfortunately, vandals have destroyed or stolen manger scenes nationwide. Here are some of the locales:

· Foreman, Arkansas
· Rogers, Arkansas
· Antioch, California
· Glastonbury, Connecticut
· Arredondo Farms, Florida (three instances)
· Bal Harbour, Florida
· Fort Walton Beach, Florida
· Panama City, Florida (more than a dozen incidences)
· Tampa, Florida
· Bainbridge, Georgia
· Schaumberg, Illinois (two instances)
· Kearney, Missouri (two instances)
· Kirkwood, Missouri
· Bozeman, Montana
· Lattimore, North Carolina
· Westbury, New York (the homeowner was assaulted)
· Elyria, Ohio
· Sylvania Township, Ohio
· Greensboro, North Carolina
· Leesburg, Virginia
· Marlow, West Virginia

In perhaps the sickest incident, an elementary public school coach in Marietta, Georgia drove students around the area in his pickup truck instructing them to thrash Christmas displays after dark; they also created obscene displays with some of the adorning statues.

There’s also this, from Eugene, Oregon: Nativity vandalism probed as hate crime,December 24, 2007:

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Two separate Eugene families whose nativity scenes were desecrated this week when a vandal replaced the baby Jesus figure with severed pigs’ heads say they were targeted because of their religious faith.

The culprits left other, more secular decorations untouched and focused only on the families’ religious displays.

“To me, they definitely wanted to make a religious statement,” said David Stahl of Eugene, who discovered a pig head in his front yard Thursday. “This takes definite thought and too much anger.”

Christians worldwide have so far failed to respond by rioting, killing innocent bystanders or each other, or burning the Oregon State Flag. Maybe Christians actually are a religion of peace?