The Austrian economics scholar Tom DiLorenzo defends Thomas Jefferson at the expense of his great rival Alexander Hamilton in a lucid new book.

My personal view is that America was very lucky that the two men tended to concentrate on their strong suits and let the other man carry out his field of expertise. Hamilton restored confidence in government finances and protected “infant industries.” Jefferson concentrated on making sure America’s distribution of land ownership wasn’t as unequal as Latin America by abolishing primogeniture and setting up a sophisticated system for land sales so that land would be available to small farmers. If the they had reversed their fields of focus, the country would probably have ended up like Argentina, with huge inequalities in land ownership and shoddy finances.

In his May 28, 2009 Washington Post op-ed, How the Golden State Got Tarnished, the lovable and appealing (see his mugshot at the linked article) Harold Meyerson explains to the world California’s 30-year march to budget ruin: It’s all due to those troglodyte Republicans — “abetted by little local Limbaughs who inflame Republican brains” –- and their vendetta against the poor, starting with 1978’s Proposition 13 that instantly slashed property taxes and, equally significantly, slowed their galloping increase.

Meyerson used to be executive editor of the L. A. Weekly and thus should be at least dimly aware of how mass illegal immigration has pummeled California, budget-wise. But there’s no hint of that in his op-ed.

Of course Meyerson’s reticence on the subject really isn’t surprising. His Wikipedia entry makes it clear that he was the West Coast equivalent of a red diaper baby and it focuses attention on some election commentary by Meyerson last September:

[T]he GOP’s last best hope remains identity politics. In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white. [See Peter Brimelow's comments at the end of this article. -– PN] Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem. This year, however, whiteness is the only way Republicans cling to power.

So problems with immigration wouldn’t find much purchase in Meyerson’s thinking process, such as it is. (more…)

Australian blogger Tim Blair writes

When considering what may motivate boat people to attempt an Australian landing, it’s probably worth listening to the boat people themselves.

He`s linking a blog by another conservative Australian who says

Kevin Rudd’s media defenders claimed in April that the increase in boat people could not be blamed on Kevin Rudd’s softening of our laws against illegal immigrants. Their argument: How could ignorant Afghanis, Iraqis and Sri Lankans have even known of Rudd’s changes?:

Which is, as he points out, an insult to the intelligence of Australians, as well as to the various criminal aliens involved, who are not that ignorant. In fact, they`re saying things like ”Kevin Rudd - he’s changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different, different,” and

“Mr Howard made it very hard for refugees. He wouldn’t let me bring my family to Australia when I lived there. But I have been told (Rudd has) made it easier for people like me to come to Australia and to bring our families with us…”

After the Rudd Government scrapped TPVs, a people smuggler “mafia man” persuaded him to set sail.
”He told me the laws had been changed in Australia, and that Mr Rudd wanted refugees,” Mr Mandalavi said.

For more on what`s been going on in Australia, see “Fate Keeps On Happening”: Australia, Boat People, And The Repressed Immigration Issue By R. J. Stove, VDARE.com, May 27, 2009. But remember, the same kind of politics in America cause the same kind of conversations to take place in Agua Prieta and Altar, Mexico, leading people not to a watery grave, as has happened to some of the boat people, but to death by heat exhaustion in the desert.

From an article in the Maryland Daily Record:

The city of Baltimore has beefed up its groundbreaking racial discrimination lawsuit against Wells Fargo with sometimes shocking testimony from a pair of the megabank’s former subprime-loan officers.

The two whistleblowers claim their co-workers targeted black ZIP codes and churches, used software to “translate” marketing materials into African-American vernacular, and referred to subprime loans in minority communities as “ghetto loans” and to borrowers as “mud people.”

Their declarations were attached to an amended complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The loan officers, who worked for Wells Fargo in the Baltimore-Washington area from the late 1990s until 2007, also alleged bank employees deceptively steered prime borrowers into subprime loans for their own financial benefit and joked that they were “riding the stagecoach to Hell.”

The city also filed declarations from four city residents who live near Wells Fargo’s foreclosed properties. They complained of squatters, rats and burst pipes, all of which have required attention from some city department.

(more…)