There’s a food recall caused by a slaughterhouse’s use of what are called “downer cattle”--cows that at some point after arriving at the slaughter house became unable to walk. These may not be good to eat, which is why it’s a health concern, but it also involves animal cruelty, in that workers at the slaughterhouse were videotaped using cruel methods to try to force the cattle to their feet.

A reader asked us if immigration was involved in this case, since as we know, the media wouldn’t say if it were, and the answer is “probably.” Throughout the United States, meatpackers have been replacing American workers with Mexican workers.As Brenda Walker has written, Mexicans are more given to cruelty towards animals than Americans are. And the workers charged with animal cruelty are named Daniel Ugarte Navarro, 49, of Pomona, Calif., and Luis Sanchez, 32, of Chino.

Unless the Mexican Consul shows up to defend them, the press is unlikely to refer to or ask about their immigration status, but we keep being told that slaughterhouse work, now that wages have been cut drastically, is work Americans won’t do.

Former slaughterhouse workers charged - A California prosecutor filed animal cruelty charges Friday …
Political Gateway

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif., Feb. 15 (UPI) — A California prosecutor filed animal cruelty charges Friday against two former employees of Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture shut down the Chino, Calif., slaughterhouse last week after a video from the Humane Society of the United States showed slaughterhouse workers at the Southern California facility forcing disabled cows to their feet using sticks, electric prods and water hoses.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos said five felony counts of animal cruelty and three misdemeanor counts were filed against Daniel Ugarte Navarro, 49, of Pomona, Calif., and three misdemeanor counts against Luis Sanchez, 32, of Chino.

“It doesn’t matter whether the mistreated animal is a beloved family pet or a cow at a slaughterhouse,” Ramos said in statement. “Unnecessary cruelty will not be tolerated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.”

USDA issued a statement Friday in support of the charges. “It is regrettable that these animals were mistreated and I am encouraged and supportive of these actions by the San Bernardino District Attorney in response to this mistreatment,” Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said.

Reading about the lack of success of Virginia’s “Tax Me More Fund”, a voluntary fund to which Virginia taxpayers who feel their taxes are too low can contribute, ['Tax Me More Fund' raises little revenue ,By Seth McLaughlin, Washington Times, February 15, 2008 ] I’m reminded of a saying of the late Senator Russell Long “Tax reform means ‘Don’t tax you, don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.’ “

According to the Washington Times, the fund has received a total of $10,217.04 since 2002. Megan McCardle says that

This is what economists call “revealed preference”. What most of us are really in favor of is higher taxes on other people. If we wanted higher taxes on ourselves, we’d give the money to charity

And if you do want to give money away, you have much better chance of having it do what you want if you give it to private charity. But there’s another factor–money given to the government turns into a form of interracial wealth transfer, which is why African-Americans tend to be in favor of higher taxes even if they’re in the upper brackets themselves. David Horowitz was criticized for saying in 2001 as one of his Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Blacks is a Bad Idea for Blacks - and Racist Too, that

Reparations To African Americans Have Already Been Paid

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts and the advent of the Great Society in 1965, trillions of dollars in transfer payments have been made to African-Americans in the form of welfare benefits and racial preferences (in contracts, job placements and educational admissions) - all under the rationale of redressing historic racial grievances. It is said that reparations are necessary to achieve a healing between African-Americans and other Americans. If trillion dollar restitutions and a wholesale rewriting of American law (in order to accommodate racial preferences) for African-Americans is not enough to achieve a “healing,” what will?

Putting it another way, people are less likely to want to give money to the government, or to support higher taxes and progressive social programs, if they feel that their tax money is going to benefit not their community, but someone else’s community across town. See Diversity Is Strength. It’s Also The Worst Sort Of Welfare State, by Steve Sailer.

A reader writes:

“Obama appeals to secular whiterpeople with a powerful religious message. The sons and daughters of mainline Protestantism will tell you they no longer believe in original sin, but a redemptive religious worldview doesn’t make much sense without it. They have translated it into white man’s guilt - for the crimes of colonialism, for the fate of the planet - and they feel it as strongly as their grandparents felt the spur of original sin. Putting it all on the white man is actually a narcissistic diminution of original sin, but try telling that to a whiterperson unschooled in theology. BarryO is selling redemption. We liked it from Jean Calvin and Jonathon Edwards, and we like it from him.”

I recently heard about a young man who majored in philosophy in college complaining about the materialism of the young ladies in his West Asian ethnic group here in Southern California. As I’ve mentioned before, mercantile minorities from West Asia are becoming ever more numerous in SoCal. They tend to be economically successful but, as the philosophy major suggested, a little boring and depressing in the narrow range in which they strive to show off their success: fancy cars, fancy decor, fancy clothes, fancy jewelry.

In contrast, easy as it is make fun of the tastes of the whiterpeople on StuffWhitePeopleLike.com, whiterpeople really do help push the envelope in their struggle for status. If somebody with more money than sense buys a $10,000 high-performance kayak, well, they are helping fund the progress of kayak technology.

Consider quintessential whiterperson Ed Begley Jr., the actor and solar-power buff whom The Simpsons portrayed driving a nonpolluting car powered solely by his “own sense of self-satisfaction.” Yet, as Begley’s neighbor Jerry Pournelle pointed out to me once when we were walking past Begley’s house, the actor’s over-investment in currently economically inefficient solar panels does provide seed capital for companies trying to invent more efficient forms of solar energy.

Anyway, I have a theory about why West Asian materialism runs in such narrow ruts. If you are Ed Begley, you want to impress other people who share your tastes and values, so you socialize primarily with other environmental fanatics who will be impressed that your house is off the power grid. But if you are from a West Asian group, there’s much pressure on you to socialize mostly within your extended family and their in-laws and in-laws’ in-laws. And because extended families are pretty average on average, specialized interests don’t cut much ice. Instead, the common denominators are the surest road to approbation.

You just bought a state-of-the-art kayak? Ho-hum. Sure, your kayak-nut friends will be wowed, but your family? Yawn. In contrast, your cousin Aram just bought the most expensive BMW. Now, that’s something that everybody in the family can be floored by!

I haven’t thought about it too hard, but I think this might explain something about why nuclear family societies have tended to be more creative and dynamic than extended family societies.

Peter Hitchens goes to Chicago to report on Obama for the Daily Mail: “The Black Kennedy: But does anyone know the real Barack Obama?”

The insider recalled: “I thought he was a very talented young man. He was smart, he was willing, he was principled and he worked hard.

“He went to Springfield [the Illinois state capital] and did not become part of the more tawdry aspects of the culture down there - alcohol and women.

But Obama quickly got another reputation. “He was always in the bathroom for the really tough votes. It was not courageous.”

The source explained this simply. Barack Obama knew even then that he could one day live in the White House.

“I think he understood long ago that the future was limitless for him. He made decisions in his very early political life that would enable him to be a candidate who would have very broad appeal.”

These not-very-helpful remarks come from a black member of Obama’s own party. What about his opponents?

One who remembers him well is Illinois State Senator Bill Brady, a white conservative Republican. The two arrived in Springfield together. In the evenings, they would gather for a friendly card game…

Brady also recalled a tendency to have it both ways and to dodge difficult votes that might hurt him later in life: “I saw great ambition in him, no question. He had an agenda.”

As for his voting performance, Brady agreed Obama liked sitting on the fence. He is recalled for taking full advantage of an Illinois rule that lets you vote “present” if you don’t want to commit yourself.

Brady recalled: “I learned very quickly that the ‘present’ vote, where the button you press is very appropriately coloured yellow, is the chicken’s way out.”

But that did not mean Obama lacked convictions. On the contrary, when it suited him he would vote as far Left as he could. “No one was further Left. He would do things that were unrealistic to prove he was Left.

“He was not far Left for political benefit but because he was a true believer.

“But these would be on broad-brush issues - unlike, say, detailed abortion laws - where it was unlikely to be held against him. I have never heard anyone say so little about detailed policies . . . He has moderated his tones, but I don’t think he has moderated his beliefs,” said Brady. [More]