Peter Brimelow will be on The Bruce Elliott Show tomorrow morning to discuss his article, “After NY-23: Goldwater, Reagan, And The Mirage Of ‘Moderation.’” The program airs in Baltimore and the interview will run shortly after 6:00 a.m. Early risers can listen to the show here.
From City Journal:
California taxpayers don’t get much bang for their bucks.In 1956, the economist Charles Tiebout provided the framework that best explains why people vote with their feet. The “consumer-voter,” as Tiebout called him, challenges government officials to “ascertain his wants for public goods and tax him accordingly.” Each jurisdiction offers its own package of public goods, along with a particular tax burden needed to pay for those goods. As a result, “the consumer-voter moves to that community whose local government best satisfies his set of preferences.” In selecting a jurisdiction, the mobile consumer-voter is, in effect, choosing a club to join based on the benefits that it offers and the dues that it charges.
Adrian Blomfield of the neocon Daily Telegraph does a great job of giving the Ft. Hood shooter’s Palestinian cousins in Ramallah in the West Bank (Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian National Authority) enough rope:
Speaking from their home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Hasan’s relatives painted a picture of a man cornered into an act of “lunacy” by the repeated discrimination of his peers and an attempt by the army to force him to serve in Afghanistan.
“They discriminated against him because he was a Muslim,” Mohammed Mohammed, one of Hasan’s cousins, told the Daily Telegraph. “We’re not trying to make excuses for him but what we were told was that he was under a lot of pressure.
“What we imagine is that he could not take this bad treatment and gave vent unfortunately.” …
In the house next door, Hasan’s brother Anas had locked himself indoors with his wife, refusing to speak to anyone, including his relatives.
According to his cousins, Hasan was badly scarred by the deaths of his parents in 1998 and 2001. Along with his two brothers, he became increasingly devout, they said.
“They became very religious after their mother died,” Mohammed Hasan said. “They were very observant. They prayed a lot.”
Yet the two cousins insisted that the major’s religion was not tinged with political fanaticism, although they said he had become increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative in recent years.
He loved being the in-house philosopher-king, an evangelist on the subject of workplace diversity and a devotee of the theories described in Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink. He gave out copies of the book and had even hired the author to lecture employees on trusting their instincts when making difficult decisions. In an industry based on analyzing raw data, Gregory was defiantly a gut man.
Now that I think about it, I realize I always had a gut feeling that, somehow, it was all Malcolm’s fault. If only I’d trusted my instincts, like he told me to in Blink … Imagine how much money I could have made shorting the stocks of companies that had hired Malcolm to give speeches!
William Saletan [Email him] writes in Slate
“Fort Hood, Texas, hosts tens of thousands of men who are trained to fight for their country. But none of them stopped Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as he blew away 13 of their colleagues Thursday afternoon. It was a civilian police officer, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who confronted and shot him in an exchange of gunfire.”[Girls in the Hood | If women can defend Fort Hood, they can defend America. By William Saletan, November 6, 2009]
That’s stupid–the reason that none of the servicemen present on the scene shot Major Hasan because none of them had a gun. The Army has a mania for keeping loaded guns away from soldiers, which it not only exercises at Fort Hood and Fort Dix, but in Iraq, Afghanistan and on the Mexican Border.
Women can make good police officers, in spite of their physical weakness, but they can’t do ground combat. Fred Reed explains why:
Looked at in detail, today’s unemployment numbers give even more reason to ask Peter Brimelow’s question: “Where are the calls for an immigration moratorium?”)
Rumors that the recession is dead are exaggerated. Payrolls dropped by a seasonally adjusted 190,000 in October, bringing to total number of jobs lost in the recession to 7.3 million. It was the 22nd straight month of employment decline.
The “other” employment survey - of households rather than business establishments - registered a gut wrenching job loss of 589,000. The household survey is used to calculate the national unemployment rate - which hit 10.2 percent in October.
Both surveys show a growing disconnect between GDP, which grew at a 3.2% annual rate in the third quarter, and the job market. Not to worry, economists say: employment is a lagging indicator.
The great unanswered question: is it different this time? Is the lag longer? Or, put differently, are the job/GDP linkages of past recessions irrelevant in our increasingly globalized, open-border economy? From our perspective, the displacement of native-born workers by low-wage immigrants could easily disrupt the historical nexus between GDP and jobs.
American worker displacement stalled at near record levels in October, as Hispanics and non-Hispanics lost jobs at identical rates:
The October draw comes on the heels of a month in which Hispanic employment rose by 192,000 and non-Hispanics lost nearly 1 million jobs.
Non-Hispanic employment has declined every month since April 2008.
Over the longer run, of course, national employment trends are overwhelmingly tipped in favor of Hispanics. From January 2001 through October 2009:
For years we have illustrated these divergent trends in VDARE.com’s American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI):
The black line tracks Hispanic job growth; the pink non-Hispanic job growth; and the yellow line VDAWDI - the ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic job growth. All lines start at 100.0 in January 2001.
In October VDAWDI rose to 124.3, up slightly from September’s 124.2. The October index is calculated like this:
VDAWDI peaked in September 2008, just before the bottom dropped out of the labor market. The onset of the Great Recession saw a sharp reduction in Hispanic job growth, both in absolute terms and relative to non-Hispanic growth.
But in recent months GDP and VDAWDI have both rebounded. Could a resurgent VDAWDI derail the much anticipated job recovery? Stay tuned.
A bunch of people have been shot in Orlando, Florida’s Gateway Center office building. Police are seeking a man named Jason Rodriguez.
UPDATE: Suspect in custody.
October’s unemployment numbers came in this morning:
The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 — and is likely to go higher.
Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended…
The Labor Department said Friday that jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, from 9.8 percent in September.
(Jobless rate tops 10 pct. for first time since ‘83, by Christopher S. Rugaber, AP, November 6, 2009)
Unemployment is generally regarded as a lagging indicator, so it will probably rise for several more months–even if the recession is ending, something which government and private sector economists usually have a surprisingly hard time establishing.
My question:Where are the calls for an immigration moratorium?
VDARE.COM has been exploring the immigration moratorium issue here. When the previous month’s numbers came out, Ed Rubenstein estimated that an immediate moratorium would reduce unemployment by about half a percentage point in a year. A moratorium enacted in 1998 would have tightened the labor market to the point where, in the depths of this recession, the unemployment rate would have been less than half of what it is now.
But when I googled “immigration + moratorium“ in News this morning, I basically got VDARE.COM, plus some intrepid private citizens posting to MSM comment threads. (A good idea, btw).
When I googled “immigration suspension“, which is the term favored for some mysterious reason by NumbersUSA, I did find a useful story by Roy Beck pointing out that the 650,000 jobs that the White House claims were created or saved by the Stimulus Bill were more than completely wiped out by the 1.125 million legal immigrants and temporary workers admitted in 2009. But nothing else.
Republicans are congratulating themselves on winning on November 3 by focusing on economic issues. Isn’t unemployment an economic issue?
Here’s the AP:
Details emerge about Fort Hood suspect background
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive.[More]
The word Muslim, which you’ll notice does not appear as a modifier to the word “radical” in “radical Internet postings”. The word Muslim first appears in this story 365 words down, in reference to the fact that Islam is unpopular in the army.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan’s aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and he wanted out of the Army.
“Some people can take it and some people cannot,” she said. “He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military.”
There’s more about the Muslim background, but they’re still radically puzzled about his motive.(The photograph above shows Nidal Malik Hasan wearing Muslim dress in 7-Eleven on the morning of the attack.)
More from Tim Blair:INFORMATION LEARNED, CONCEALED.
Mark Steyn is talking about it on Rush Limbaugh. (Listen here.)
Contrary to initial reports, the Fort Hood shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is alive. He was shot by a civilian police officer, Kimberly Munley, whom he wounded. Officer Munley is reportedly “in stable condition.” Depending on reports, Akbar is in stable condition or on a ventilator. He was caught on a store video at 6: 20 a.m. yesterday in traditional Moslem garb. You know what that means: The mass murder had nothing to do with Islam!
Already, officials are feverishly coming up with Bizarro World, non-Islamic explanations for the mass murder. Hasan was reportedly distraught about being deployed to Afghanistan, and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, based on the stories his combat veteran patients had told him. Never mind that, as James Fulford pointed out, you can’t get PTSD without “without actual trauma.”
Of course, Hasan was upset… because he’s a Moslem!
A military mental health doctor facing deployment overseas opened fire at the Fort Hood Army post on Thursday, setting off on a rampage that killed 12 [N.S.: in the meantime, 13] people and left 31 [30] wounded, Army officials said.
Authorities said immediately after the shootings that they had killed the suspected shooter, but later in the evening they recanted and said that he was alive and in stable condition at a hospital, watched by a guard.
“His death is not imminent,” said Lt. Gen. Bob Cone at Fort Hood. He offered little explanation for the mistake, other than to say there was confusion at the hospital.
A law enforcement official identified the shooting suspect as Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.
The violence was believed to be the worst mass shooting in history at a U.S. military base.
The shooting began around 1:30 p.m., when shots were fired at the base’s Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening, Cone said.
[Army: Fort Hood shooting rampage suspect is alive by April Castro and Devlin Barrett, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 2009, 18:38 PST.]
Initial reports said that there were three shooters. Later reports stated that there was only one shooter, and that the other two men had been released, only to be superseded by reports saying that three men are in custody. Now, we are being told that Hasan was a “lone shooter.” In other words, no one outside of the top echelons of the military police currently knows what the situation is.
In this morning’s New York Times news blog, there is nothing about three shooters, but the following 8:38 a.m. update has Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”) while shooting people.
“Update | 8:38 a.m. In an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC Friday morning, Gen. Robert Cone, the Fort Hood commander, said that Major Hasan is in stable condition but has not yet been interrogated. Mr. Lauer said that a relative of one of the witnesses to the shooting said that Major Hasan shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (’God is great’) during the rampage. Gen. Cone said that ‘there are first-hand accounts here from soldiers that are similar to that.’
[Latest Updates on Shootings at Fort Hood by Robert Mackey, The Lede: The New York Times News Blog, November 6, 2009.]
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