Now that the Feast Of The Epiphany is past, the Christmas Competition may be considered closed. (But feel free to email us with any new horror stories, anyway, they’re fun to read.) Peter Brimelow will be writing a post-Christmas roundup shortly. Check out some the Christmas cheer from 2008 below.

WAR AGAINST CHRISTMAS COMPETITION 2008: [blog] [I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI][VII][VIII][IX][X][XI][XII]

An indictment in an immigration fraud case:

Alleged advice to asylum seekers: Tell feds you’re gay

A Kent couple who claimed to be experts in immigration cases advised clients to falsely claim to be gay and subject to persecution or even death if they returned home so they could win asylum in the U.S., according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday.

By Mike Carter

Seattle Times,January 7, 2009

A Kent couple who claimed to be experts in immigration cases advised clients to falsely claim to be gay and subject to persecution or even death if they returned home so they could win asylum in the U.S., according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday.

Steven and Helena Mahoney were arrested Tuesday after an investigation that began in September, according to federal officials. Prosecutors allege the couple claimed to be experts in immigration cases while operating Mahoney and Associates in Kent.

The Mahoneys — who are not licensed to practice law in the state of Washington — are each charged with one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. Steven Mahoney also has been charged with three counts of immigration fraud, according to the indictment.

They appeared Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler, who ordered Steven Mahoney to be held pending a detention hearing on Friday. Helena Mahoney was released.

The judge set the trial for Jan. 29.

The indictment alleges that in at least three instances the Mahoneys told immigrants to falsely state they were homosexual on immigration documents and that they feared persecution or even death if they returned to their own countries.[More]

Note that the “victims” are the immigrants who were advised to lie. I wrote years ago that

“[T}he immigration authorities are starting to consider Latin American homosexuals as victims of persecution because they are from countries with the same sodomy laws as were in force in every state in the union until 1961, New York until 1980, and in 23 other states until the Lawrence v. Texas decision.

Can we have some kind of moratorium here, where foreign states are given a few years to catch up to the latest liberal ideas promulgated by the Supreme Court?”

By now many of you have heard that the geniuses at the Environmental Protection Agency, in their ongoing battle to control greenhouse gas emissions, are proposing a tax on “stationary” sources like cattle and hogs that spend much of their time standing around and, well, you know.

I propose applying this tax to the many members of Congress who do pretty much the same thing while the country is allowed to go to hell.

A reader pointed out this article to me by Silla Brush from The Hill:

President-elect Obama will likely make several tough decisions on immigration policy during his first few months in office, even if he postpones wide-ranging reform until later in his first term.

Obama will be under pressure from interest groups to review or drop several administrative policies aimed at curbing illegal immigration, which President Bush enacted after he failed in 2007 to persuade lawmakers to pass broad legislation that would have put millions of immigrants on a path to citizenship.

“I think immigration is shaping up to be an issue that he is going to face a consensus of pressure,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “There is no reason a number of administrative actions can’t be put into place in the first 100 days.”

Immigration was not one of the top policy objectives laid out by Obama during the campaign. But labor, business and immigrant-rights groups sense an opportunity to push their agenda after Hispanic voters broke in large numbers for Obama and helped him win four battleground states: Colorado, New Mexico, Florida and Nevada. Noorani wants to see legislative movement on an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws by Thanksgiving of 2009.[ Obama to face critical immigration test early ]

I honestly don’t think Obama or any economist in his transition team has thought really deeply about the issue of immigration. It isn’t really obvious to me what the Obama administration will do. I hope Joe Guzzardi is right–and there is no major amnesty. However, I would suggest that if there is either an amnesty or an expansion of illegal immigration that will make it much harder for Obama to deliver on his promise to increase jobs and improve economic conditions for Americans.

Remember, most of the workers in every job category–even roofers and chicken pluckers–are still Americans. If Obama cannot deliver jobs for Americans-at least in some modest numbers, relative to the natural increase of the US workforce–I doubt Democrats will do well in the 2010 midterm elections.

Obama got a rather narrow victory in 2008. It wasn’t so much that people were in love with Obama, but it was clear even to many people with money that what Bush was doing wasn’t working–which is part of why Obama could outspend McCain enough to eke out a narrow mandate.

Even a minor mistake by the Obama administration  gives the GOP more time to remake itself into a viable party. That process is starting. An example is W. James Antle III’s review of a book titled Grand New Party:
:

Douthat and Salam suggest reducing the payroll taxes of low- and middle-income families and making up the lost revenue by means-testing Social Security benefits for the rich. This will turn tax debates about the “richest 1 percent” upside down and expand the constituency for a tax-cutting party. It would also offer tax relief to people even New York Times editorial writers would agree are deserving. The authors describe this idea as “an ideal way for conservatives to once again make tax cuts appealing in Middle America” and also “provide a populist sweetener” to renewed entitlement reform.

If some conservatives might quibble with the above proposals, Grand New Party contains several more that will send them into open revolt. Drawing on the work of Nobel laureate economist Edmund Phelps, Douthat and Salam call for a program of wage subsidies for the working poor that could cost up to $85 billion a year.

The idea of the GOP as a “conservative” party is pretty new. Karl Marx actually used to write for a Republican newspaper shortly after the party’s founding–and encouraged his followers to join the Republican party. Teddy Roosevelt and Robert LaFollete continued a tradition in the GOP that was hardly conservative on economic issues. As late as the 1930’s, Socialist Norman Thomas could have credibly sought the nomination or either the Republican or Democratic party if he had chosen to do so.

As late as Nixon, we had strong advocacy of policies like a guaranteed annual income coming from a Republican administration. That tendency continues with the recent book In Our Hands
by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute.

I would suggest that if the GOP had run on Murray’s program this year, which is basically $10,000 per year in cash and health benefits to each American citizen-and curtailment of a huge variety of programs that tend to benefit specific groups, the GOP just might have been able to beat Obama. I’d personally, go further than the Murray program-and I would fund it more with taxes on the very rich(i.e. wealth taxes), but Murray is possibly the best prominent republican that has a serious plan to try to contain growing economic inequality that is ripping America apart. The Murray plan isn’t quite fully funded with the existing tax system-but then, neither is the current rash of corporate bail outs.

The thing is, that the Murray plan or anything like it is even less compatible with Open Borders than our existing welfare state. The crux of the shared insanity of the the Republican and Democratic parties: that we can have a loose immigration policy and free trade without experiencing within the US the huge gaps between the rich and poor that mark the world economy. Any serious attempt at addressing economic inequality in America will have to be coupled with restriction of immigration to be real and credible.

What has killed the recent incarnation of the GOP is the broadly held notion that GOP policies of the last 28 years have tended to increasingly benefit the rich-not the broad American public. The only way to undo that notion is to propose something real and credible.

It really would be nice if something else were on the table before it becomes obvious to the public the leaders of both major parties have abrogated their public trust in enormous ways.

Jill Claman of Fox News interviews investment guru David Swensen, who has guided Yale’s endowment ($20 billion last summer) to (until recently) consistently (and, to my mind, suspiciously) gigantic returns (17.8% per year for ten years):

Claman: Isn’t it fair to say right now we face what some call a Black Swan event? This term “Black Swan” indicates that something we rarely ever see. Has it taken you by surprise?

Swensen: You’re absolutely right to characterize it as the Black Swan event. By the nature, the events have to take people by surprise.

Don’t blame me, it was a Black Swan!

Joe Guzzardi will be on the Radio Free Rocky D show today at 12:30 p.m, EST. The show airs in Charleston, SC and can be listened to here. He will be discussing Wall Street Journal writer Miriam Jordan, winner of the 2009 Worst Immigration Reporter award.