This article is a rare MSM report that specifies the race of the attackers in the murder of the Ecuadoran immigrant in New York. Also notable was the statement of New York’s Governor David Paterson condemning “hate” crimes against foreigners, as he showed extra concern by meeting with the family of the victim [Gov. Paterson visits family of hate crime victim Jose Sucuzhanay, New York Daily News, Dec 19, 2008].

Gov. Paterson met Thursday with the family of an Ecuadoran immigrant beaten to death in a Brooklyn bias attack and urged New Yorkers to help police find the thugs who did it. [...]

Sucuzhanay, a 31-year-old real estate broker and father of two, was badly bludgeoned Dec. 7 in Bushwick by three black men who shouted anti-gay and anti-Hispanic slurs, witnesses said.

Sucuzhanay’s body is being flown back to his native Ecuador today to be buried.

Paterson said he promised the family he would do all he can to help find the killers.

“I wanted to let them know that the power of the executive branch and the powers of the state will be utilized to the fullest extent,” he said.

This was a terrible crime, and I’m sorry the guy got killed. But I don’t recall New York Governor Pataki condemning the 2006 murder of independent film director Adrienne Shelly by illegal alien Diego Pilco who killed her so she couldn’t call ICE and have him deported.

I don’t remember the state executive taking an interest in the murder of the high school student from Westchester County, Elizabeth Butler, killed by a previously arrested illegal alien who was not deported.

When Rockland County housewife Mary Nagle was brutally killed in 2005 by an illegal alien hired to work on the family home, previously arrested (but undeported) Guatemalan Douglas Herrera, Governor Pataki did not speak out against lax immigration enforcement.

Is it not curious that New York elected officials care more about foreigners murdered in America than American citizens who are killed by illegal aliens?

Here’s a Washington Post story that’s relevant to the mortgage meltdown. As you know, Wall Street poured hundreds of billions of dollars into ludicrously inflated and implausible mortgages in the four “sand states” of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. In essence, this was a bet that Hispanicization and high home values are compatible. We now know the answer.

But … was the question even asked? Did anybody at a financial firm send around an email to fellow executives asking, “Isn’t California full of Latinos? Can Latinos really pay back these giant mortgages were handing them? If Latinos can’t, then who is going to pay even more to move to a neighborhood that we just helped tip Latino? What exactly are we doing in California?”

Of course not. Such an email would come up in “discovery” of an anti-discrimination case, as the federal government itself is finding out:

A federal magistrate judge has ruled that the U.S. Secret Service “made a mockery” of long-standing rules by failing to preserve, concealing and even destroying evidence sought by 10 African American current and former employees in a racial discrimination case.

In an opinion filed late Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, Judge Deborah A. Robinson effectively barred the agency from presenting a defense in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2000.

Robinson called the penalty an appropriate sanction for years of delay because the Secret Service’s conduct “prejudiced Plaintiffs’ ability to conduct meaningful discovery and prepare to address the merits of their claims.”

The judge’s ruling effectively lowers the burden of proof for plaintiffs and limits the amount of evidence government lawyers can use to defend the agency against allegations that supervisors routinely harassed black agents and refused to promote them to management positions.

Robinson earlier sanctioned the agency three times for being slow to search for documents as directed by the court and to turn over racially charged e-mails shared by white Secret Service supervisors. Jennifer I. Klar, a lawyer with Relman & Dane, which is representing the plaintiffs pro bono, said the ruling “sends the clear message that no entity, not even the United States government or the elite Secret Service, is above the law.”

A spokesman for the Secret Service called the decision “expected” given Robinson’s prior rulings. But he said the agency “wholly disagrees” with Robinson’s findings and would appeal.

Secret Service spokesman Edwin M. Donovan said the agency has “made every attempt to respond fully and completely to all discovery requests,” turning over 22 million documents, asking nearly 300 former employees if they kept relevant records and paying a contractor $2 million to search 350 employee computers and the agency server.

And what’s been found in these emails? Such incriminating speech as this example highlighted by ABC News as part of a major story on discrimination in the Secret Service:

Another white senior supervisor, apparently bitter towards the Rev. Al Sharpton and angry at Ruben Studdard for winning “American Idol” in 2003 over Clay Aiken, allegedly wrote, “Reverse discrimination and political correctness are destroying virtually every aspect of American life.”

I’m glad ABC put “allegedly” in that sentence, since obviously if he did actually say, “Reverse discrimination and political correctness are destroying virtually every aspect of American life,” he should be taken out back and shot immediately. (You didn’t know that? You should. It’s in the Constitution — the Zeroth Amendment.) So, we wouldn’t want to be hasty in determining whether or not somebody said that.

But the black agent who is the lead plaintiff was discovered to have personally forwarded:

Messages sent from his Secret Service e-mail account include a comparison of black, white and Hispanic wives and how they handle household chores, parenting differences between black and white mothers and a list entitled “No U D’ient,” emulating vernacular sometimes associated with low-income African-Americans and including lines that mock those who live in government housing and use food stamps.

The horror, the horror!

The ABC station in Chicago reports:

By Chuck Goudie

The ABC7 I-Team has learned that an attorney who went undercover for the FBI in the late 1980’s says he told federal authorities years ago about wrongdoing by Blagojevich.

His name is Robert Cooley.

Cooley was a criminal defense lawyer in Chicago in the late 1980’s who became one of the most potent witnesses against Chicago corruption, testifying for federal prosecutors in cases that resulted in dozens of convictions.

Cooley says that before Rod Blagojevich got into politics he was a bookmaker on the North Side who regularly paid the Chicago mob to operate.

“When I was working with government wearing wire, I reported, I observed Rod, the present governor, who was running a gambling operation out in the western suburbs. He was paying street tax to the mob out there,” said Robert Cooley, federal informant.On a web-based interview show last week, Cooley said he reported to federal authorities nearly two decades ago that Rod Blagojevich had been operating an illegal sports gambling business.

During Operation Gambat in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Cooley’s undercover work and testimony put away 24 crooked politicians, judges, lawyers and cops.

Several years ago, when Mr. Blagojevich was running for re-election, Cooley provided the same information to the ABC7 I-Team. Because Cooley did not want to be identified at the time and the governor denied it, ABC7 did not report the story.

On Tuesday, Cooley spoke on the record.

He told ABC7 that Mr. Blagojevich regularly paid a so-called street tax to Robert “Bobby the Boxer” Abbinanti, a convicted outfit gambling collector. In the early 1980’s, Abbinanti was working for convicted West Side mob boss Marco D’amico. Bookies pay street taxes to the crime syndicate in exchange for being allowed to operate such a racket.

“I predicted five years ago when he ran the first time that he was a hands on person who would be selling every position in the state of Illinois and that it exactly what happened,” said Cooley.

This is the caliber of human being who becomes a successful Illinois politician. And, therefore, this is the type of man that Barack Obama, with every option in the world open to him, chose to spend his days in alliance with, so burning was Obama’s hunger for power.

I moved to Chicago three years before Obama and had a lovely time there. But never once did I ever consider becoming a Chicago politician. I can’t recall ever meeting anybody in Chicago who grew up elsewhere who said they had ever thought of becoming a Chicago politician. It no more occurred to us than to apply for membership in the Chicago Outfit. But Obama spent three years at Harvard Law School telling everybody that he was going back to Chicago to become mayor.

It’s not as if Obama wanted to be a reformer, like his predecessor in the U.S. Senate, Peter Fitzgerald, who brought Patrick Fitzgerald to town to be Eliot Ness. Obama didn’t want to change the rules of Illinois politics; he wanted to win at Illinois politics.

From the Washington Post, “Obama Team Develops Stimulus,” about what’s now being spitballed as costing $850 billion:

The potential for massive new spending has touched off a frenzy among interest groups eager to claim their share of the expanding stimulus pie. The profusion of requests from governors, transportation groups, environmental activists and business organizations is spawning fears that the package could be loaded with provisions that satisfy important Democratic constituencies but fail to provide the jolt needed to pull the nation out of a deepening recession.

“It’s everybody’s wish list, everybody’s favorite program. And I think that’s a big mistake,” said Alice Rivlin, a Brookings Institute economist and former budget director for President Bill Clinton who has been advising Democrats. “I agree with the Obama team that we need a big increase in public investment, but it should be done very, very wisely,” rather than through a rushed process that risks being “seen as scattering money to the wind.

An Obama adviser involved in crafting the stimulus package said the transition team was keenly aware of the potential pitfalls and was focused on funding ideas that would quickly pump money into the sagging economy, fulfilling Obama’s promise to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs by 2011. Because many ideas probably won’t meet that standard, the adviser said, the team is developing a screen to keep them out.

So, let me see if I have this straight … Experienced Democratic expert Alice Rivlin is worried that the Obama Administration will spend the money too fast and the Obama adviser responds that they are devising a system to make sure they don’t spend the money too slow.

Maybe I’m just not showing a positive mental attitude, but this does seem like a fundamental conundrum — you have to spend it fast to make it a stimulus, but then you are probably just going to waste it — that somebody ought to ask Obama about before Congress hands him $850 billion.

And why all the huffing and puffing over “infrastructure,” which obviously takes more time to get going than just hiring, say, some social workers. Is it because “infrastructure” sounds manly and complex? Is it because the unions have been demanding more spending on infrastructure since 1982? (I recall identical authoritative sounding predictions during the 1981-82 recession from the AFL-CIO that America was about to collapse in a heap unless Congress voted a giant increase in infrastructure spending.) Is it to keep illegal immigrant construction workers from going home to Mexico before they can be “put on the path to citizenship” (and voting Democratic)? Is it because that’s what they do in Chicago and Obama mostly knows the Chicago Way?

And shouldn’t we start thinking about how to export more? The most obvious government policy to cut the trade deficit by selling more abroad is the for the government to cut back on environmental restrictions on mining.

Peter Brimelow will be on the Chuck Wilder show at 3:20 PM Eastern Time. You can listen here.