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January 13, 2009
Clash of Civilizations
The Immigration Invasion And The Deer Disaster Meet Opposition (Finally!) In Liberal Maryland
The Immigration Invasion And The Deer Disaster
Meet Opposition (Finally!) In Liberal Maryland
The congruence of two recent Washington Post front page stories can hardly be over looked. You can’t avoid contrasting the actions taken to solve these problems by so-very-tippy-toe elected officials with sensible initiatives taken mostly by private, thinking citizens who have forced changes.
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The first story:
to my delight and surprise, I found a front page, Sunday, January 11th news column in the Washington Post entitled Attitudes Shift on Illegal ResidentsSome|Link Crime In Montgomery To Immigration [By Dan Morse and Ann E. Marimow]. It actually uses the term “illegal“ and finally reports in considerable detail on something which most of that county’s residents have felt for years.
Of course the reporters had to make it appear like a sudden change in citizens’ attitudes:
“For years, mainstream Montgomery County has been generally accepting of illegal immigrants, and county leaders followed suit, pledging not to enforce immigration laws even as police agencies elsewhere in the region began to do so.
“But public sentiment appears to be shifting in Montgomery, driven less by ideology than by alarm over rising crime and the recent slayings of a 14-year-old honor student on a county transit bus and a 63-year-old woman in her Bethesda home.
“’People who are very, very tolerant want to see some changes,’ said County Council member Marc Elrich [Email him] (D-At Large), one of five council members who said in interviews that public opinion has shifted in recent months.”
Sorry, Mr. Elrich, I don’t buy your lame excuse that the whole county just woke up, when poll after national poll shows over 70% of all citizens are concerned about the immigration invasion.
Even in Takoma Park, long known as “The People’s Republic of Takoma Park,” where “since 1985 [the city] has officially refused to identify or report undocumented immigrants“. The Post reports that Mr. Elrich “said crime has ‘really hit home’ even in his neighborhood of Takoma Park” .
Especially when “Mariana Cordier, who grew up in the county and is a past president of the Maryland Hispanic Bar Association, said residents are increasingly linking crime to illegal immigration.” This is national, folks, so get with the facts.
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The second Post story:
On Monday, January 12th, I find another Post front pager: Once Scorned, Deer Hunters Find Welcome in Suburban Md., [By Steve Hendrix , January 12, 2009]. It tells us:
“A year ago, this would have been illegal: Mark Eakin, a federal oceanographer and avid deer hunter, sat in a portable tree stand with his bow at the ready, overlooking a small creek and two Rockville back yards on a cold January morning. As the camo-clad Eakin peered down, the weekday routine rolled down the street behind him, school buses, trash trucks and commuters heading toward Wootton Parkway…Eakin, who has bagged eight deer since bow season began in September…[is] one of several hunters, game officials and residents to hail Montgomery County’s surprising emergence as …a deer hunting haven.”
As a resident living near the border of this county. overlooking a view of the 2,000 acre Rock Creek Park, I can tell you the deer population is expanding without restriction. They have no predators and they eat everything you can plant except daisies and–please, horticulturists, give us some ideas–we long ago gave up tulips which the little dears eat like bon bons.
I was raised in a small Western Pennsylvania town, where the first day of deer hunting season was reason to give kids a day off school. I have often wondered when the huge number of these creatures would trigger a reasonable citizen reaction. Were we too effete or too feckless to care?
Now we have seen one sensible reaction. Is this the start of something bigger?
The story continues:
“Last season, Eakin’s Rockville perch would have been prohibited as too close to a road. But now he is able to set up his stand with the permission of surrounding homeowners. ‘It’s not that people embrace the hunting,’ said Eakin, who belongs to a group of volunteer archers who hunt at the request of neighborhoods with large deer populations, ‘but they know something needs to be done.’ Behind Montgomery’s new openness to hunting, officials said, is public frustration with the whitetail population boom. Crumpled fenders, ruined gardens and the risk of Lyme disease have made residents much more receptive to hunters.”
“They’ve gone from ‘How dare you propose shooting the deer’ to ‘When are you coming to my neighborhood?’ ” said Rob Gibbs, head of Montgomery’s Deer Management Working Group”.
John Yakaitis, 62, has watched increasing numbers of deer destroy his shrubs and the surrounding forest understory. His wife hit a deer two years ago, doing more than $1,000 in damage to their car. ‘There are just so many of them, they’re eating everything in sight and they’re still starving,’ Yakaitis said. ‘A lot of folks who were opposed to it are signing up’ to allow hunters, he said. “
In fact, I suppose when it happens to an elected official, as it did when a council member, George Leventhal (D-At Large) was injured in a deer collision on the Capital Beltway, suffering serious facial damage that required reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, action to make sensible laws quickly follows.
Hey, are we getting to see the parallels yet with dear deers and the immigrant invasion yet? Perhaps some of these elite Congressional members will need to be attacked by illegal aliens, or improperly vetted legal ones, before they see the light.
Sensible laws on deer thinning can be constructed to make sure citizens are not endangered by firearms or even bows and arrows. The hunters should be vetted carefully, so they are in effect like our Border Patrol, fully professional and licensed. Why not?
But to do nothing is exactly what our Federal elected officials did about human immigration policy since 1965 until finally it got so out of whack. Even now the new Congress doesn’t seem to get it. It seems, even amidst this deep recession, that proper measures taken now will be deemed by the bleeding hearts, ethnic and ideological lobbyists, and by their corporate puppet masters as examples of “nativism“ or “racism“.
Back to the illegal (and please also the overdone legal) immigration situation. We can be glad Montgomery’s elected officials finally found it expedient to edge into their version of the truth, which they must have known for years. Their citizens had surely understood the situation for years, but now, with crime as just one element of the problem, these leaders say they begin to “get it”.
Guess these elected folks in Montgomery realize they better do something or their reelection may be on the line. A small step was recently taken by County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger who, the story reports, is “developing a proposal to have county police officers check the immigration status of suspects arrested for violent crimes and weapons offenses.”
When I was an officer in the Navy, one of my Chief Petty Officers would often opine that standard military refrain, “There’s always that 2% who don’t get the word.” Enter Bethesda resident Judy Campbell, “I wouldn’t have gone for it a year ago,” when interviewed recently, leaving a natural food co-op in Takoma Park with soy milk and a slice of vegan double-chocolate fudge cake. “Until this series of violent crimes, it wasn’t on my radar screen.”
Admittedly so-called “liberals” such as Campbell, a 50-year-old nurse, have been among those slow to “get it”. And in fact the article reports that “She thinks illegal immigrants deserve publicly funded health care.”
However, Campbell now “supports the chief’s efforts, in part because the emerging proposal is not as far-reaching as policies that have been enacted in Prince William and Frederick counties.” Do something but not enough to really get the job done…great thinking, Ms. Campbell.
Ms. Campbell unfortunately is joined by a typical deaf to the facts–or afraid of the facts–official, County Executive Isiah Leggett (D), [email him] who claims he has detected no major shift in public sentiment. Leggett, who in the past has said Montgomery should not be in the business of enforcing immigration laws, would have to approve the Chief’s proposal before it could take effect. Sounds like one guy to dis-elect.
Naturally, the Post reports “Opponents hope to persuade him to reject the idea, which they say would result in racial or ethnic profiling that could ensnare innocent people. State Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez [email her] (D-Montgomery) and other opponents said residents would reject the proposal if they understood its consequences more fully.”
You mean they would reject you when they hear you are against reasonable law enforcement, don’t you, Ms. Gutierrez?
The irrationality of past practice is underlined by this quote: “The proposal is a departure from past practice for a police agency that has cultivated relations with immigrant communities. The department has long taken the position that delving into immigration matters could jeopardize cooperation from crime victims and witnesses, undermining public safety.”
But then that is the political flavor of Takoma Park. Wonder what this team of Post reporters would have found if they hadn’t concentrated their research there?
Their acid test of need for change must be that you first need to run you car into an errant deer or get shot by an illegal alien?
This kind of thinking denotes that it is better to harbor dangerous illegal aliens among those who are here legally, rather than find out who is legal and who is not. This of course follows the common refrain of local officials who always avoid the unfunded by proper Federal funding, the cost of policing the illegal alien problem. As more and more complain, the noise level will perhaps reach the office holders, who as noted above, don’t want to be turned out of office.
Apparently the issue turned hotter most recently with the murders by illegal immigrants, who were charged in the two killings, “one of which police linked to a series of home invasions“..
Indeed, “Serious crime is up 7.7 percent in Montgomery, a trend driven by increases in home and car break-ins across the county.”
Typical Post reportorial comment: ” Police acknowledge that they do not know how much of that increase, if any, is attributable to illegal immigrants.” Oh, please!!!!
Especially after the article tells us that “As of a week ago, eight of 16 people held in the county jail on murder charges had immigration detainers placed on them, meaning federal authorities might move to deport them after their criminal cases have run their course.”
A big deal with illegal alien advocates is concern about racial profiling. Give me a break. If people are arrested for a crime, they should be asked for identification. A driver’s license, a home address, a Social Security number. What is so hard about getting information on that?
The plain truth is that the way we have allowed this immigration situation to deteriorate caused the problem. Lax enforcement over decades at every level of government, but particularly at the Federal level, has brought us to this fix, just like the mortgage crisis and the various scams perpetrated on Wall Street.
Round’em up and ship’em out should have been our action all along with illegal aliens. These people are either here legally or illegally. Find out. Two of the Montgomery murder suspects “are illegal immigrants whose status went undetected during previous arrests in the county.”
One non-Takoman council member, Michael Knapp (D-Upcounty) [email him] notes that mainstream people are now asking why this wasn’t handled better.
County Executive Leggett is faced with a decision on this proposal by month’s end, but says he wants to “use all reasonable tools to get criminals off the street but is concerned about the potential for profiling. ‘You don’t want to punish or stereotype people in a way that is unfair and illegal.’”
Talk about trying to escape fulfilling the responsibility for which he was elected.
The Post reports that “Police officials have not said how officers would determine whom to press on the question of status, or what kind of training they would need to carry out the policy effectively.” Cripes, you have a felon and you can’t ID him? Where are Mickey Spillane or Sam Spade when we need them? Just like the deer infestation, we know when we have too many and now is the time to fix this.
Many citizens, including one local activist group called Help Save Maryland, are demanding action on this plan. And while you are at it, Mr. Leggett, how about insuring that all illegal aliens are denied public services?
Unfortunately, nearby Prince George’s County is “governed by a 2003 County Council resolution directing them to refrain from enforcing immigration laws”. Hard to believe.
How about cutting off Federal funding for any jurisdiction which fails to obey Federal laws?? You know, just like the 55 MPH law was enforced on states, by withholding Federal Highway money.
Prince William County, for example, has gotten tougher, and, as the Post story notes, “requires that officers ask about the status of everyone they place under arrest.” In Frederick County, “as part of a partnership with federal immigration authorities, all people booked into the county jail are questioned about their citizenship. The answers can trigger more questions and a call to federal agents.”
Deer me—have we learned anything after all these years of immivasion experience? Not enough, but some, apparently.
On Trade, War, Immigration, Bush Boneheaded To The Last
On Trade, War, Immigration, Bush Boneheaded
To The Last
With his public approval where Harry Truman’s stood when he left office, George W. Bush gave his last press conference yesterday.
And like that predecessor he often identifies with, Bush showed a Trumanesque defiance of his critics—and a Trumanesque failure to understand what ruined his presidency.
He denounced protectionism, as he has with dismissive contempt since he went to New Hampshire a decade ago. But nowhere in his defense of free trade was there any explanation for how Middle America lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in his first term and a million more in the last year.
Nowhere does there seem an awareness that the ideas he absorbed at his father’s knee and the Harvard Business School had resulted in the de-industrialization of his country, an enormous and growing dependency on Japan, China and Asia for the essentials of our national life, and, now, for the borrowed money to pay for them.
Someone once defined tragedy as what happens when a beautiful theory collides with a fact. And this is what has happened every time a great empire—be it the Spanish, British or American—embraced free trade as its salvation.
President Bush says it was freedom that prevailed when he rejected the pleas of weak-sister Republicans and backed the surge. But what spared us a debacle in Iraq was an infusion of 30,000 combat troops, an uprising against the murderers of al-Qaida and a U.S. decision to buy off the Sunni tribes, a strategy besieged empires have pursued for centuries.
Nor does there appear in Bush’s self-assurance any awareness of the cost of his Freedom Agenda. In Iraq, it is 4,000 U.S. dead, 30,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, millions of refugees, a pogrom against an ancient Christian community, and a strategic victory for Iran and its Shia allies across the Middle East. When last heard from, the Ayatollah Sistani—the chief Shia cleric in Iraq, who has welcomed Iranian but not American visitors—was calling for Muslims to stand up against Israeli criminality in Gaza.
Like Woodrow Wilson before him, Bush appears to believe that the nobility of his goals—expanding freedom and bringing an end to tyranny in our world—validates and will sanctify his decisions.
Like Wilson, he is a utopian. He fails to understand that idealism has its delusions and disasters.
The war Wilson led us into “to make the world safe for democracy” gave us Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and 70 years of the most barbaric empire in all history. The peace Wilson brought home led straight to Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich and a second world war far worse than the first.
The West’s road to hell has been paved with good intentions.
President Bush rightly denounces Europeans who see Israel as always wrong. Yet he behaves as though Israel can do no wrong. Sixteen days into the Gaza war, with the Palestinian dead and wounded near 5,000, and a humanitarian catastrophe at hand, has our “compassionate conservative” president uttered one word of compassion for those whose losses outnumber the Israelis’ 100 to one?
In defending his rejected immigration reform, President Bush clearly sees himself as in the vanguard of decency, and admonishes his party against being perceived as anti-immigrant.
But is this president oblivious to what is happening in his country because of his and his father’s failure to secure the border? Even in rich, liberal Montgomery County, Md., one reads over the weekend that there is a hardening of attitudes toward illegal immigration after a spate of crimes and killings. Working-class Americans pay the price of the idealism around the dinner table at the Crawford ranch.
In his first five years, Bush himself has admitted, 6 million aliens were arrested at the border, breaking into this country. One in 12—500,000—had criminal records. Is it anti-immigrant to demand a halt to this invasion, even if it means troops on the border? Is it truly compassionate, or an act of cravenness, to insist that the answer is amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegals and absolution for the businesses that hired them?
Choleric and cocky Harry Truman may be Bush’s role model. But it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who had to clean up the mess Harry left behind.
Six months into office, Ike had ended the Korean War. He had the courage no president has since shown to tell the Israelis they must get off occupied land. They did.
While surely repelled by Nikita Khrushchev, especially for the Hungarian bloodbath of 1956, Ike had him up to Camp David in 1959 because, wicked as the Bolsheviks were, they had nuclear weapons, and one must talk to them.
Prudence is the mark of the true conservative. Ike and Ronald Reagan had it. Neither Bush nor Truman did. And that is why the former left the country so much better off than did the latter.
Goodbye, Mr. President, and God bless.
Allahu Akhbar! Heil Hitler!
Allahu Akhbar! Heil Hitler!
by Baron Bodissey
I just received this compilation of videos of Pro-Hamas anti-Israel demonstrations. I haven’t had time to check them all out, so if you find any bad or inappropriate links, let me know.
Also, you may want to download your own copies of these, because YouTube regularly removes videos such as these.
- Montreal: Hate on the streets of Montreal
- Oslo: Just Another Day of Riots and Looting for “Peace” in Gaza — Oslo, Norway
- Oslo: Muslim Thugs attack Police Car in Oslo
- London: Anti-Israel Anti-War Rioters vs London police
- London: Muslims attacking police
- London: Third World Immigration Turns London into Middle East Battleground
- La police britannique s’enfuit aux cris de “Allahu Akbar”
- La police britannique s’enfuit aux cris de “Allahu Akbar”
- Danemark: HEIL !: À bas la démocratie. Tous les juifs doivent être tués. Allahu akhbar ! “
- Toronto: “Jewish child, you’re gonna f****n die”
- Los Angeles:”Vive Hitler ! Les Juifs aux fours”
Sydney’s Socialist Revolutionaries Support Israel
Sydney’s Socialist Revolutionaries Support Israel
by Baron Bodissey
Well, at least eleven of them do. Look at the poll on the right sidebar of this Indymedia site in Sydney, Australia. More than half (58%) of respondents thought that Israel was justified in retaliating against attacks by Hamas on its citizens.
And not one of the poll’s respondents agreed that “Israel has no right to exist”!
What’s wrong with you, Socialists of Sydney? Better get with the program!
Also: there’s a protest rally coming up on Sunday in Melbourne. Don’t miss it — bring beer, bacon sarnies, and the dog to show your solidarity with Hamas.
[Post ends here]
The California Crisis: Divide And Prosper?
The California Crisis: Divide And Prosper?
California is in crisis. Maybe we should recognize that it’s terminal.
The problem: Sacramento is in a state of total capitol dysfunction. The budget has grown vastly more impossible to balance (an additional $40 billion over 18 months must be scrounged up somehow), but the tax-intoxicated Democratic legislature insists upon more money from the citizens. State Controller John Chiang has warned that the state will have to begin issuing IOUs February 1.
We have been warned so often about disaster that it can be difficult to believe that the axe may be close at hand. A year ago I wrote Mexifornian Pols, Schwarzenegger, Bankrupt California. The only thing that has changed is how many more billions of dollars we are in the hole.
The Sacramento politicians hoped that good economic news would appear to rescue them from responsibility. But instead the financial picture has been the worst in decades. California’s unemployment rate in December was 8.2 percent—1.5 percentage points higher than the national level. The state’s mortgage foreclosures were up 131 percent in 2008 over the previous year. Each day’s financial news has been worse than the one before. So—no easy escape for Sacto pols.
Even with the worsening budget crisis throughout 2008, however, California’s legislators frittered away the session, creating bills that indicate a distinct lack of seriousness and were ultimately vetoed by the Governor, including…
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A measure to declare May 22 Harvey Milk Day to honor the murdered gay San Francisco Supervisor.
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A law correcting punctuation on bottled water labels.
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A law requiring rodents slated to be food for pet shop animals be slaughtered humanely.
To underline the busy-work quality of legislation this year: the Governor vetoed a record high 35 percent of bills passed. [Schwarzenegger vetoed bills at record rate in 2008, by Steve Wiegand, Sacramento Bee, Jan 1, 2009.] And Bee Columnist Dan Walters called the 772 bills signed into law “mostly trivial” [California Capitol's 2009 Prospects Look Grim, January 12, 2009]
Californians have tried long and hard to make Sacramento get serious about the state’s business. In the beginning, there was Proposition 13, the 1978 taxpayer revolt against skyrocketing property taxes. In 1990, a citizen initiative, Prop 140, forced term limits on Sacto lawmakers. In 2008, Speaker Fabian Nunez and like-minded riff-raff pols attempted to gut term limits by calling their naked power grab “reform”, but the voters were not fooled.
Of course, the best known effort to fix state politics was the 2003 recall of Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, and subsequent election of Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who still claims to be a Republican. Voters were angry about Davis’ approval of drivers’ licenses for illegal aliens and were particularly frustrated by his refusal to bring state spending under control.
According to calculations by State Senator Tom McClintock, spending under Gov. Davis had grown by seven percent annually. But, since then, Schwarzenegger has increased that rate to 10 percent.
Professor John G. Matsusaka of USC wrote in the LA Times
“California state government spent $145 billion last fiscal year, $41 billion more than four years ago when Gov. Gray Davis got recalled by voters. With all that new spending—a whopping 40% increase—we ought to be in a golden age of government with abundant public services for all.
“So why does it seem like the quality and quantity of government is not all that different from 2004? How many of us feel like we are getting 40% more public services, 40% better schools, roads, parks and so on? “
Prof Matsusaka helpfully explained “what we got from the last $41 billion.”
“Some of it went to cover increases in the cost of living, and state spending naturally grows with the size of the population. But even adjusting for inflation and population growth, state spending is up almost 20% compared with four years ago, a big enough bump that ordinary Californians should be able to notice it. The state’s financial statements describe where the money went—the big gainers were education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion)—but not why these billions don’t create even a blip on our day-to-day radar. ” [Where does all that state money go?, July 17, 2008)
At least one of those money magnets, education, is hugely impacted by the entry of millions of immigrants and illegal aliens. A FAIR report, Breaking the Piggy Bank, figured the $7.7 billion spent on educating the children of illegal aliens was 13 percent of the 2004-5 education budget. In addition, the 2007 Legislative Analysts Office report on English learners noted that 25 percent (1.6 million) of California’s K-12 students are English learners. Plus, over $1.3 billion in funds were slated for bilingual programs for 2007-08 (Fig. 8)—even though the voters supposedly ended "bilingual" education (more accurately described as teaching in Spanish) via Prop 227 in 1998 in favor of English immersion for immigrant kiddies.
It is likewise significant that SacraMexico pols won't even take action against the low-hanging fruit for spending cuts, e.g. the taxpayer tuition subsidy (AB 540) for illegal alien college students (many of whom are Asian, interestingly). That issue has had to be dragged through the courts over years at great expense for the participants because the legislature is too Mexifornicated to mind the people's business properly. It was recently announced that the case would advanced to the highest state level, California Supreme Court to take on state law granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants [LA Times, Jan 5, 2009]. Assembly Member Chuck Devore introduced legislation last November to repeal AB 540, estimated to cost taxpayers $117 million annually. He introduced a similar measure in January of 2008 to no avail.
The tuition debacle has gone on for so long (since 2001) that there are now hundreds of illegal alien college graduates who benefited by the program of taxpayer subsidy but who are unable to work legally. After years of unearned entitlement, the young foreign adults are miffed that they cannot obtain employment in America. As public policy, AB 540 has been doubly evil: not only have foreigners received subsidized educations but they also took up valuable college slots which should have gone to California young people whose parents paid taxes for state colleges and universities.
Voters are demoralized by the stubborn resistance of Sacramento to responsibility. In September, a Field poll showed the public’s approval of Gov Schwarzenegger to be just 38 percent. But 63 percent would vote against recalling him from office.
“Why bother with all that trouble to get another useless suit?” seems to be the general attitude.
Many Californians have voted against incompetence and Mexicanization by leaving [More are moving out of California than in, By David Pierson, LA Times, December 18, 2008].
California may just be too big and too diverse to govern. California’s difficulty excessive has resulted in balkanized tribal areas of different ethnicities and languages, as well as vastly different ideas about how (and whose) resources should be used. Teddy Roosevelt’s characterization of “squabbling nationalities” comes to mind.
Thirty-eight million people spread over 163,707 square miles can be hard to wrangle, particularly when 28 percent were foreign born as of 2005, more than double the national proportion (12 percent). California has the highest percentage of foreign language speakers—43 percent speak a language other than English at home.
In particular California has too many Mexicans who care more about their ancestral homeland than assimilating to this country.
In addition, immigration-caused diversity is a force multiplier of societal stresses. As sociologist Robert Putnam has determined, diversity decreases trust. It doesn’t help that immigrants are never satisfied, never done with demanding more that what citizens receive, like tuition breaks and totally free medical care.
Excessive diversity has been piled upon an unfortunate level of profligate population growth. California’s population in 1950 was 10.6 million. If state growth had mirrored the national rate, that is, doubling from 1950 to 2000 (i.e. from 150 million to 300 million), then California at the end of the 20th century would have numbered a little over 21 million. Instead, the population reached nearly 34 million at that time, with no end in sight—and no political leadership that supports limits to growth.
No-one in California government today is willing to take the tough measures necessary to solve the structural financial problems. The short-term fix is to kick them down the road into someone else’s administration.
The answer: Possibly—slicing up this giant dystopia into two or three parts. (Three parts worked well enough for Caesar’s Gaul.)
In fact, the idea of dividing California has been proposed more than two dozen times during the state’s history. A serious attempt was made in 1859 with a bill by Assembly Member Andres Pico to divide the state along the Tehachapi Mountains at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Today, localizing many of the Hispanics into the southern zone beyond the Tehachapi Mountains could make sense; call the place Mexifornia and write it off as a failed social experiment.
One of the more recent partition proposals was in the early 1990s, when then-Assemblyman Stan Statham of Redding came up with a three-state plan that was passed by the Assembly as a item to be placed before the voters for a non-binding referendum to determine the public interest. But the bill did not make it through the Senate.
The Three Californias blog has helpful background information about the issue of divvying up the state. The author presents a division of three in which he has attempted to combine natural political and environmental demarcations, in a way that is sensible and agreeable. That blog’s basic map:
It is an axiom in the patriotic immigration reform movement that good fences make good neighbors. By limiting the opportunity for cross-communal plundering through the tax system, good fences could make fiscally-responsible neighbors too.
The effects of massive fiscal stimulus – Part II
The effects of massive fiscal stimulus – Part II
President-elect Barack Obama is turning apocalyptic in his speeches.
He’s no longer claiming to heal the economy and the world by January 21.
Fiscal stimulus The effects of massive fiscal stimulus – Part II: President-elect Barack Obama is turning apocalyptic in his speeches…. (12-Jan-2009)
The economic outlook for 2009 : How we got to where we are today, who’s to blame, and where we’re going in 2009. (5-Jan-2009) The effects of massive fiscal stimulus.: A study comparing Japan’s deflationary spiral with ours shows the way…. (24-Dec-2008)
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Here’s an excerpt from the speech he gave on Thursday:
“We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime, a crisis that has only deepened over the last few weeks. Nearly 2 million jobs have been now lost, and on Friday we’re likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. Manufacturing has hit a 28-year low. Many businesses cannot borrow or make payroll. Many families cannot pay their bills or their mortgage. Many workers are watching their life savings disappear. And many, many Americans are both anxious and uncertain of what the future will hold.Now, I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years. The unemployment rate could reach double digits.”
Interestingly enough, he also blames the crisis on the United States:
“For years, too many Wall Street executives made imprudent and dangerous decisions, seeking profits with too little regard for risk, too little regulatory scrutiny, and too little accountability. Banks made loans without concern for whether borrowers could repay them, and some borrowers took advantage of cheap credit to take on debt they couldn’t afford. Politicians spent taxpayer money without wisdom or discipline and too often focused on scoring political points instead of problems they were sent here to solve. The result has been a devastating loss of trust and confidence in our economy, our financial markets and our government.Now, the very fact that this crisis is largely of our own making means that it’s not beyond our ability to solve. Our problems are rooted in past mistakes, not our capacity for future greatness. It will take time, perhaps many years, but we can rebuild that lost trust and confidence. We can restore opportunity and prosperity.”
One thing that really bothers me is that I cringe whenever he uses the word “partisan” or “ideological,” as he does all the time. When he uses those words, what he means is that everything that the Bush administration did was based on ideology and partisanship, while every decision he makes is based on pure, golden facts.
This is at the heart of Generation-X nihilism, destructiveness and self-destructivenes that I’ve discussed so many times. It represents such complete contempt for other views, that those views can’t even be grasped, and have to be explained as being bizarre and ideological. From this contempt is a willingness to destroy everything that came before, and this inevitably leads to self-destruction. No wonder Strauss and Howe found that, of the our generational archetypes, people in the “Nomad” archetype (like our Generation-Xers) are by far the angriest and bitterest in old age.
As I discussed a couple of days ago in “The outlook for 2009,” I am very concerned that we’re headed for a catastrophic financial crisis.
The macroeconomic view
The above remarks are based on intuition. I’ve seen what’s happened in the past few years, and what I hear from Obama and his supporters today. But is my intuition correct?
Now I have to return to an article that I wrote a few weeks ago, called “The effects of massive fiscal stimulus.” In that article, I discussed a presentation by Richard C. Koo, Chief Economist at Nomura Research Institute, comparing Japan’s 1990s deflationary spiral with America’s in the 1930s and today. (It’s still worth watching the entire video of that presentation, as you can do by following the link in the above referenced article.)
I said at that time that Koo’s presentation is one of the few things I’ve seen in years that have forced me to reevaluate my thoughts on the coming financial crisis, and indeed some of Koo’s conclusions seem to contradict what my intuition tells me about the potential destructiveness of Obama’s completely undisciplined economic policy.
Let’s recap with a summary of some of the major concepts of Koo’s presentation.
In “normal” times, money is created by private saving and private lending, with the banks as the intermediary. Thus:
- Individuals and businesses save money by depositing it into banks, expecting a return in the form of interest.
- Banks are interested in lending out that money to borrowers, since the way they make money is by charging interest on loans.
- Individuals borrow money from banks to purchase consumer goods and services. The money flows to businesses that provide the goods and services, and some of it is saved in the bank, completing the loop.
- Businesses borrow money from banks to invest in company growth, creating new products and jobs. Some of the income from product sales pays the salaries of the employees, and some goes into savings, completing the loop back to the bank.
The government can stimulate this process through either monetary or fiscal policy. In monetary policy, the Fed lowers interest rates, the banks borrow from the Fed, and loan money out of individuals and businesses, who then spend it or invest it. In fiscal policy, the government borrows money and uses it to reduce taxes, make direct payments, or fund public works projects and the military.
Money is actually created by the above process. Suppose that I have $1000 in my pocket, and you have nothing. Then between us we have a total of $1000.
Suppose I deposit $1000 in the bank, and you borrow $1000. Then how much money do we have between us? The answer is that we now have $2000; I still have my $1000 as a bank deposit, and you have $1000 in your pocket.
During a deflationary spiral, that process is reversed. You pay down your $1000 debt, and I hoard my money. The result is that we now once again have only $1000 between us. There is actually less money in the world than there was before. (As the saying goes these days, the extra money has gone to “money heaven.”)
A deflationary spiral occurs because of a massive change in attitudes and behaviors by the general public. In “normal” times, people are interested in consumption and growth, causing a growth in the money supply. In a deflationary spiral, people are interesed in minimizing debt, causing a reduction in the money supply.
During a deflationary spiral, nobody wants to borrow money, since they’re paying down debt. This is a problem for banks, since they need to lend to make money. Hence, monetary policy (lowering interest rates) fails to stimulate the economy, since nobody wants to borrow at the low interest rates.
However, fiscal policy still works: The government borrows money and uses it to reduce taxes, make direct payments, or fund public works projects and the military.
How do we pay for fiscal stimulus?
This is the most mind-blowing part of Koo’s presentation. According to Koo, the fiscal stimulus pays for itself in the form of savings. Since money is being used to pay down debt, it returns to the banks in the form of savings or debt repayment.
The banks have to make money, and they only way they can do that is to lend the money out and collect interest. The problem is that there are no private borrowers who wish to borrow money. So the bank might be stuck with the money. Instead, the banks use the money to buy Treasury bills and bonds. This returns the fiscal stimulus money to the government.
Here’s an excerpt from Koo’s presentation (at time 1:03:55):
“Last point: Who’s going to buy these Treasury bonds with this large fiscal stimulus? That question has been raised many times during my visit. The US has no savings to finance this fiscal stimulus that I’m talking about.My answr to that is: No worries. There should be no problem with the funding issue. And the reason is the following: The amount of fiscal stimulus needed to stabilize the GDP in this instance is exactly the same amount as the excess savings created in the US economy through increasing household savings and the increase in debt repayment.
This is the funding that the government should pull out of the banking system and put back into the income stream, which means that the entire amount of savings needed is generated in the economy. And the US government will be just taking that extra savings generated and putting that back into the income stream. So there’s no reason for interest rates to increase.
Quite the contrary, the fund managers of the banks, who have to manage these funds, should be more than happy to lend to the government, because there are no other borrowers who would borrow the money, so that the banks can earn interest.
And we saw this happen in Japan as well. At the beginning, when we saw our budget deficit growing very rapidly, a lot of people were out there saying, “The whole thing will collapse, and high interest rates will result, and we’re all dead.”
But interest rates actually came down over this period. Our budget deficit in Japan is 180% of GDP, the highest of any industrialized nation at the moment.
Our interest rate, long 10-year Japanese government bonds, is only 1.5%. That’s lower than the lowest that the US government reached during the Great Depression, which happened to be 1.85%.
And why is the rate so low? Because there are no private sector borrowers, and people are still saving money. The government is borrowing that money, and the fund managers are more than happy to give that money to the government because it’s the only borrower left. The same thing will happen in this country as well.
And so, I don’t think people should be too worried about interest rate implications of this large fiscal stimulus. Of course, if you don’t put in the fiscal stimulus, then the economy will collapse, and then interest rates will go even lower. But I think you’d rather have a slightly higher interest rate and a working economy than a Great Depression type situation.”
Recent events have strongly supported this prediction by Koo. Banks have been pouring money into Treasuries in the past few months, pushing yields (interest rates) to historic lows. This money from banks is now available to the government for fiscal stimulus and, if all goes well, the money will once again return to the Treasury in the same way.
Generational trends in fiscal stimulus
Well OK, if money spent on the fiscal stimulus just loops back into the Treasury, what happens a couple of years down the road, when people have paid off most of their debt, and they start spending and investing again?
This is where generational theory enters the picture. As we’ve described many times on this web site, the 1990s dot-com bubble occurred at precisely the time that the risk-averse survivors of the Great Depression all disappeared (retired or died), all at once, and were replaced in senior management positions by risk-seeking Boomers.
Koo confirms this generational interpretation in the following excerpt (at 1:06:35):
“And it will be a long while before interest rates go back up to anything we remember seeing in normal times. After the Great Depression, those people who experienced the Great Depression, they never came back to borrow money in their entire lives, their remaining lives.[Exhibit 23.] And as a result it took the United States 30 years to bring interest rates back to the level of the 1920s. Thirty years. In 1929 the NY stock market crashed; it was 1959 that interest rates finally reached the level of average interest rates in the 1920s, because private sector sorts just pulled themselves out of borrowing altogether.
You might know some parents or grandparents who lived through the Great Depression. They never borrowed money the rest of their lives because the pain, the experience of paying down debt during the Great Depressioin was just so overwhelming.
We still have this problem in Japan right now. That’s why interest rates are so low – 1.5%. The US will have that problem, [and so will] Europe, China. They all will have this problem of too much savings, too little borrowing in the private sector, and the government trying to put that money back into the income stream.
And so, I don’t think interest rates is going to be a big problem, I don’t think inflation is going to be a big problem, but maintaining aggregate demand – that is going to be the challenge.”
And so, according to Koo, paying for the fiscal stimulus won’t be a problem in the near term, and it won’t be a problem in the long term — not for 30 years, anyway.
This leaves me personally with a bit of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, my intuition tells me that the policies of Obama and his advisors are reckless, and will lead to disaster.
But Koo tells me not to worry. Any amount of fiscal stimulus is OK, because the money just comes back to the Treasury anyway. It sounds like a dream come true — a credit card with an unlimited credit line that never has to be paid back.
Problems with fiscal stimulus theory
So let’s try to resolve this cognitive dissonance by looking at some of the problems with Koo’s theory. And there are three serious ones.
Problem #1: The coming crash.
As I’ve written many times (and won’t discuss further here), neither Obama nor Koo has repealed the Law of Mean Reversion, nor have they repealed generational theory, and a major stock market crash is still in the wings, since stocks have been overpriced since 1995.
What effect would a stock market crash have on the fiscal stimulus program? That’s really a political question, but history tells us that the likely result would be greater unity behind President Obama.
In generational terms, the crash would seal the “debt minimization” behavior in the current generations. Today, there’s still a lot of irrational hope that Obama will save the world on January 21. A crash would remove that irrational hope.
Problem #2: Leakage.
A glaring omission in Koo’s presentation is what I call “leakage.”
The whole point is to stimulate demand within the country. This requires a somewhat closed system, where any consumer purchases are of products and services supplied domestically. If a consumer consumes imported goods, then money leaves the country to pay for those goods, instead of returning to the Treasury. It’s this money leaving the country that I call “leakage,” and the only solution is to export products and services equal to the level of imports.
Koo developed his theory from Japan’s experience in the 1990s and early 2000s, where it apparently worked satisfactorily. But during this period, America, China and other Asian and European countries were in an economic bubble, able to import as many goods as Japan could export.
In the coming crisis, almost every country on earth, including America and China, will be unable to purchase goods manufactured in other countries. In fact, we’ve already seen this happening, in last month’s article, “World wide transportation and trade sink farther into deep freeze.” Thus, the environment in which Koo’s theories worked for Japan will be totally and dramatically different from the environment that we’ll be facing soon.
Just take one example: Oil. America imports millions of barrels of oil every day, paying for it with dollars borrowed from China by selling them Treasuries. When China’s financial crisis becomes so bad that they will be unable to purchase any more Treasuries, then America will no longer be able to purchase oil. In fact, that’s probably the point at which the American government will go into default, and outstanding Treasuries will be marked down to a fraction of their previous values.
Meanwhile, on main street, there’ll be little heating oil available to heat homes, and there’ll be little gasoline available to run cars.
I suppose the ironic result will be that Obama will then agree to use some of fiscal stimulus money to drill for oil offshore, and in Alaska.
Problem #3: Timing.
The other glaring omission from Koo’s presentation is timing.
Koo’s examples are of the Great Depression, starting in 1934, five years after the crash, and of Japan, starting in 1997, seven years after their crash.
In both of those cases, the crash triggered the bursting of the credit bubble and the beginning of the deflationary spiral. People immediately started paying down debt, and after 5-7 years had past, most of the debt had been retired, either through paying it down or through bankruptcy and foreclosure.
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According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal:
“U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.That has resulted in a rise in the personal saving rate, which the government calculates as the difference between earnings and expenditures. In recent years, as Americans spent more than they earned, the personal saving rate dipped below zero. Economists now expect the rate to rebound to 3% to 5%, or even higher, in 2009, among the sharpest reversals since World War II. Goldman Sachs last week predicted the 2009 saving rate could be as high as 6% to 10%.
As savings increase, economists say, spending is likely to contract further. They expect gross domestic product to decline at an annualized rate of at least 5% in the fourth quarter, the biggest drop in a quarter-century.”
Thus we see that the sharp reversal in population behavior, from being net borrowers to being net savers, began in the third quarter of last year, very recently. This means that the deflationary spiral didn’t really begin to take hold until at most six months ago.
Furthermore, as I pointed out above, the major stock market crash hasn’t even occurred yet, and that’s when the real debt minimization behavior will begin.
So the timing problem is that Koo’s theories may work well 5-7 years after the deflationary spiral begins, so that it’s had some time to work itself out, but they may not work well at the beginning of the deflationary spiral.
These two factors — leakage and timing — indicate that the deflationary spiral will be far deeper and far more devastating than indicated by Koo’s figures.
Military spending
So what’s the solution to my little puzzle, my cognitive dissonance? Is my intuition right, that Obama and his advisors are making reckless, catastrophic plans that will destroy the economy? Or is Koo right, that fiscal stimulus is an infinite credit card line, where loans never have to be repaid?
It’s quite possible that the answer is “all of the above” and “none of the above.”
Koo himself went out of his way to characterize military spending as the most effective form of fiscal stimulus, though he said he hated that conclusion. But military spending produces “useless products,” while forms of fiscal stimulus that produce useful products end up putting the government in competition with private industry to produce those products.
Koo also made the following rather ominous observations: What Germany discovered in the mid-1930s, and America discovered after 1941, is that the most effective way to end a deflationary spiral is to have a major war. (I suppose that Koo might have made the same observation about mid-1930s Japan.)
This fact will not be lost on China. China has been implementing a massive military expansion for several years now, and has been preparing specifically for war with America. China’s “fiscal stimulus” package is certain to boost military spending even farther. Add to that the increasing civil unrest in China, and Beijing will be sure to redirect that anger towards Japan and the United States.
China is going to do this irrespective of what America does. It thus seems likely that Obama will have to include additional military spending in his own fiscal stimulus package, and if he doesn’t do it now, events will force him to do it later.
Thus, the solution to the worldwide financial crisis may well be the Clash of Civilizations World War.
During a discussion of all the confusion about the details of the planned fiscal stimulus on the Sunday morning news talk shows, one pundit, Peggy Noonan, made the following observation:
“I think they’re sending a big cloud out there, a huge rolling plan, that they mean to go forward almost of its own dynamism, and pushed in part by a sense of emergency and crisis. My sense of watching the President-elect today is that he just may get a lot of the things he wants, so he’d better be wantin’ the right things, because it’s going to be on him in a very big way.”
Right now we need President-elect Barack Obama to lead us. As his speeches becom increasingly apocalyptic, let’s all hope that he’ll be wantin’ the right things, because the survival of America depends on it.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, as well as more frequent updates on this subject, see the Financial Topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Read the entire thread for discussions on how to protect your money.
For those interested in learning more about the theoretical side of Generational Dynamics, Matt1989 has just started a new thread and new discussion called Generational Crises and Methods for Evaluation in the Generational Dynamics forum. Matt has done an enormous amount of extremely valuable work developing generational timelines for numerous countries.) (12-Jan-2009)
Light on the Dark Continent
Light on the Dark ContinentGedahlia Braun, Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit, (Self-Published), newly revised in 2007, 231 pp., delivered as a PDF attachment. Fascinating observations of an American who has lived in Africa for nearly 30 years. reviewed by Jared Taylor “Almost no one, black or white, left or right, ever says anything but rubbish about race.” So writes Gedahlia Braun in a remarkable book that is anything but rubbish. Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit is one of those rare books so full of insight and good sense that they are a pleasure to write about. Since the subject is race, this book has not found a commercial publisher, but it can be ordered directly from the author. Dr. Braun has lived in Africa with only brief interruptions since 1976 and in South Africa since 1988. This book, in the form of a chronological journal, describes how contact with the dark continent quickly dispelled his liberal views and led to startling but plausible conclusions that most Americans—even readers of AR—are likely to find surprising. Two Theses Dr. Braun draws on his years of intimacy with Africans to support two main conclusions. The first is that virtually all Africans take it for granted that whites are smarter than blacks. They haven’t the slightest illusion that they could have invented computers or built airplanes, and they recognize that blacks and whites differ in moral and psychological characteristics as well. What is more, Africans are not the least offended by these realizations. Unlike whites, they do not see any inherent immorality in acknowledging racial differences. Some clever, westernized Africans have discovered—just as American blacks have—that whites are terrified at the thought of racial differences, and have learned to manipulate this terror to their own advantage. But they, too, Dr. Braun finds, can almost always be persuaded to acknowledge the inherent limitations of Africans. Dr. Braun’s second thesis follows from the first: The vast majority of South African blacks do not want black rule. They know from their own experiences with black policemen and black bureaucrats that when Africans are in positions of power they are corrupt, despotic, and oppressive. Many blacks mouth the slogans of “liberation” but have unrealistic, often ludicrous notions of what “liberation” is likely to mean. Some, when pressed, will even admit that although they know black rule would be a catastrophe for South Africa they pretend to support it because they know that is what whites expect them to do. Ultimately, as Dr. Braun recognizes, his observations illuminate the terrible flaws in the white man. Without constant urging from liberal whites, virtually all Africans would be content to put their fate in the hands of a race that they recognize as smarter and more fair-minded than their own. Dr. Braun puts it this way: “(1) Blacks cannot manage a modern industrial democratic society; (2) blacks know this and would never think of denying it were it not for white liberals insisting otherwise; (3) except for those black elites who hope to take power, black rule is in no one’s interest, especially not blacks; (4) blacks know this better than anyone and are terrified of black rule.” On what does Dr. Braun base these heretical conclusions? After several years in Africa, he began to realize that many blacks do not think the way white liberals keep telling us they do. He then systematically started asking Africans—even virtual strangers—what they thought about racial differences and whether they were in favor of black rule. Unlike most whites, who would be ashamed to ask such questions, Dr. Braun is utterly uninhibited. He discovered that most blacks are eager to talk frankly; most have never had an honest conversation with a white about race and are charmed to find one who is not blinded by the usual cliches. Just as interestingly, he quickly learned that even whites who have lived all their lives in Africa—including journalists and other liberals who claim to speak for Africans—have never had an honest conversation with a black about race. For the most part, blacks fear majority rule because they know they are much more likely to be cheated, robbed or brutalized by other blacks than by whites. Many Africans believe, in so many words, that “Whites respect one another but we don’t.” One woman put it this way: “The white man knows the difference between right and wrong and will usually do the right thing. The black man also knows the difference but will usually do the wrong thing.” It is their own experiences that confirm many blacks in their preference that their country be governed by whites. Educated, highly politicized blacks sometimes have a slightly different political view. When pressed, they agree that black rule is likely to produce the chaos and mismanagement common in the rest of Africa. They recognize that a black government would permit democratic elections only once, and then institute tyranny. Somehow, though, this disaster is worth striving for because, as Dr. Braun explains, they think “it is all right for blacks to oppress other blacks yet absolutely wrong for whites to treat them well—but without suffrage.” That they should happily anticipate black rule is, in Dr. Braun’s view, “a profound tribute to the capacity of human beings to deceive themselves.” Perhaps most common, though, is a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitability of political change and ensuing chaos. As one middle-class colored [mixed-race] man said to Dr. Braun about majority rule: “When that day comes I will kill myself.” Cargo Cults How the vast majority of uneducated South Africans view the future must be understood in light of how poorly they understand how the world works. Dr. Braun reminds us that belief in magic is deeply rooted among Africans. For example, he reports that when a European magician came to Ibadan, Nigeria and “sawed a woman in half,” the audience assumed he had actually cut her in two. After all, if African witch doctors can fly through the air and turn people into alligators, the least a white man can do is cut people up and put them back together. Likewise, when Zambia had one of its yes-no “elections” in 1988, the Secretary of State for Defense and Security warned that people had better vote “yes” because the government would find out if anyone voted “no.” How would it find out? Through magic. Dr. Braun reports that many Africans see Western technology and high standards of living as a kind of magic. Many think that a college diploma is not an indication of a certain level of knowledge but a talisman that can make a big house and a Mercedes appear. Even the blacks who run African schools have superstitious beliefs in the forms of education; if white schools have a study period at 2:00 p.m., black schools must have one at the same time even if it is inconvenient. Many blacks think that whites get their money simply by going to banks, the benefits of which they have selfishly denied to Africans. In this context, it is no surprise that many black South Africans think that black rule will somehow divert the magic of wealth and prosperity from whites to blacks. The African National Congress encourages this view. For example, its members have told blacks who work for whites as maids and houseboys that if they contribute money to the ANC for a certain number of years the house they work in will become theirs. Many black servants have therefore astonished their employers—and been dismissed—by suddenly claiming to own the house. Dr. Braun quotes extensively from a brilliant article that likens the African attitude towards economic development to the cargo cults of the Pacific islanders. Some of these islands had been largely ignored by the modern world until the Second World War, during which the Allies used them as staging areas. To the wonderment of the natives, the guardian spirits sent giant metal birds down from the sky, in response to various ceremonies such as the building of long flat clearings in the jungle. Out of the bellies of the giant metal birds came marvelous things like flash lights and round metal boxes full of food. When the war was over and the Allies left, the islanders decided to cultivate the guardian spirits themselves. They built their own flat clearings in the jungle, and set upon them giant birds made of boxes and coconut trees so as to coax their great metal cousins down from the sky. They marched in formation around the flat clearings and waved strips of cloth stuck on sticks. Somehow it did not work; the giant birds never came back. As Dr. Braun quotes from the article, in Africa the equivalent of the cargo cults “is a mysterious process called development; the industrial countries of the North are the gods and spirit agents; the magico-religious rites are those of development planning, infrastructure building and foreign investment. . . . “. . . men of business make much of company letterheads, business suits, briefcases, elaborate business cards, and of boardroom titles. “When the first spurt of national infrastructure building failed to produce the desired cargo of development, additional rituals were invented. A ritual of North-South dialogue was started to persuade the guardian spirits of development to bring aid, to transfer technology, and to grant better terms of trade. When this ritual also failed, Third World spokesmen resorted to blaming the West for holding up Third World development.” Just as the cargo cultists believed that by manipulating some of the forms of 20th century commerce they could reap 20th century rewards, Africans believe that a paved highway here and a cement factory there will bring the magical cargo of development. It is in this fashion that many South Africans expect black rule to bring prosperity. Often, it is only when Dr. Braun explains that black rule means that hospitals, libraries, police stations, and government offices will be run by blacks—and consequently go to ruin—that some Africans first begin to understand the real implications of what they think they support. Those who take for granted the idea that black South Africans want majority rule often point to the fact that when the ANC “comrades” call for a strike, the vast majority of blacks do as they are told. As Dr. Braun explains, this is because the “comrades” rule black townships through terror and no one dares disobey. People who go to work during a strike may be “necklaced” or have their houses burnt down. “Comrades” may cut off their ears “because you didn’t listen to us.” Women may be stripped naked in the streets. The Western press occasionally mentions ANC exuberance of this kind, but never recognizes that it produces an artificial appearance of unanimity. As Dr. Braun points out, it is folly to expect democracy to develop in the townships: “The idea of free and fair elections in such a context is nonsense.” Apartheid Racism, Guilt, and Self-Deceit is one of the few contemporary books to make a rational case for apartheid, the South African system of separateness. As Dr. Braun makes clear, the question that both the United States and South Africa must answer is how to establish a fair and workable system for populations with vastly differing abilities. The problem is much more urgent for South Africa than for the United States for two reasons: Whites are an 18 percent minority and will be swamped by majority rule. Also, though Dr. Braun does not mention this, because of miscegenation with whites, the average IQ of American blacks is 10 to 15 points higher than that of African blacks. Therefore, when white South Africans voted last year to hand over power to blacks, they agreed to submit to the will of a majority people with an average mental age of twelve. Influx Control and Pass Laws, which were at the heart of apartheid, were recognition that European civilization could not survive without them. Dr. Braun argues that there is nothing surprising or immoral about white resistance to racial integration. It is true that the first blacks to move into an all-white neighborhood or to attend an all-white school are usually intelligent and well-behaved. However, as the population of a school or neighborhood becomes blacker it inevitably deteriorates and everyone—black and white—knows this. Naturally, blacks want to go to white schools and live among whites because all people benefit from improved surroundings. However, they also know that if blacks keep pushing into what were formerly white enclaves they will cease to be either white or desirable. Ironically, it is whites who, because they are unwilling to accept racial differences, pretend that integration need not destroy whatever has been integrated. One of the other important effects of apartheid was to keep blacks from congregating in cities. Dr. Braun speculates that the whites of previous generations understood instinctively that large numbers of detribalized, urban blacks would subside into barbaric squalor. The filth, crime and chaos in the townships—as well as in other African cities—proves how right they were. Today’s whites, on the other hand, have accepted the same preposterous racial orthodoxies that rule America. The press now gamely argues that unfortunate black behavior is a result of apartheid whereas Dr. Braun explains that the policy of separateness was necessary because of black behavior. He does not, however, have any illusions about separateness: “There is no point in pretending that separateness will be equal. It can only be equal if the groups are equal. But if they were equal there would be much less reason for separateness in the first place.” Another consequence of the wrong-headed view that apartheid causes Africans to behave like Africans has been an astoundingly stupid wages policy: “It was assumed, a priori and courtesy of Western Liberal Ideology, that blacks were unproductive because they were underpaid. In reality, just the opposite was true [blacks were paid low wages because they were unproductive], and rather than increasing productivity, paying them more decreased it, by showing the shrewd black man just how foolish the white man really is.” Any employer knows that nothing is more stupid than to raise a poor worker’s wages in the hope that he will therefore become more productive. Higher wages are a reward for better work, but as Dr. Braun observes, “only when our behavior is ruled by pandering white guilt do we ignore such obvious truths.” Another idea that has been accepted among liberal whites is that South Africa’s wealth was created by the hard work of blacks and that whites have profited from it illegitimately. This is similar to saying that America is rich because of black slavery, and Dr. Braun is amazed that anyone can swallow such nonsense: “To argue that it was black labor that ‘really’ created this wealth is like saying that the riveters are the ones who ‘really’ built the space shuttle! If blacks ‘really’ created the wealth of South Africa, why don’t they create it anywhere else? Whites can create wealth without black labor, but blacks on their own create no such wealth.” Dr. Braun has concluded that blacks and whites differ as much morally as they do mentally, and that these differences made economic development impossible. He wonders whether one of the reasons large-scale cooperative enterprise is nearly impossible throughout Africa is that blacks do not trust each other and cannot be counted on to work together for the benefit of all. He advances the provocative view that Africans may not have an internalized moral sense but depend instead on tribal authority to set rules of conduct: “Hence, when they were detribalized (by colonialism, etc.), these external constraints disappeared; and since there never were any internal constraints, we witness rampant lack of self-control amongst detribalized blacks (crime, drugs, promiscuity, etc.). Where there has been some substitute for tribal control—as in white-dominated South Africa or the segregated American South—this behaviour was kept within tolerable limits. But when such controls vanish (as in present-day South Africa and in large U.S. cities), you get this phenomenon of widespread unrestrained violence.” Dr. Braun has found that like American whites, most South African whites are incapable of talking sensibly about race. Like American whites, they now even take a perverse joy in applauding their own dispossession. He describes the tempestuous enthusiasm of white audiences for the anti-white South African movie “Cry Freedom,” and writes, “the positive joy with which they cheer their own demise is quite amazing, isn’t it?” He speculates that this joy stems from “a fatal flaw in the white race: the capacity for self-flagellating, exaggerated and unwarranted guilt and the self-hatred that seems to underlie it.” This self-hatred is at the heart of the white man’s increasing insistence that he is a miserable racist who is to blame for the black man’s failures: “Once blacks learn that whites think blacks have reason to hate them, many will be happy to oblige, instinctively realizing their psychological advantage as the injured party . . . . All in all a tremendous con game, in which the white man is both instigator and willing victim.” An Affection for Africans From this review of Racism, Guilt and Self-Deceit one might conclude that its author dislikes Africans. Nothing could be further from the truth. Dr. Braun obviously likes them very much, and it is because he likes them and has spent so much time with them that he has learned what so many of them really think. Along the way, he learned a great deal about Africa and Dr. Braun leavens his political observations with fascinating asides. For example, in Nairobi, two African friends were astonished to learn that he had a dictionary of the English language. After he got over his astonishment at their astonishment, he realized that same-language dictionaries are needed only for written languages. Kikuyu, the language his friends spoke, has no literature and therefore needs no dictionaries. It exists only in the minds of the people who speak it, and all Kikuyu speakers know all the words in the language. An unwritten language is likely to be very limited. Dr. Braun learned from students in Nigeria that their native language cannot express degrees. It is impossible, for example, to say that the coconut is half-way up the tree or that it is near the top; it is possible only to say that it is “up.” Dr. Braun writes with particular admiration for African women, who have children, suckle them, and carry them about on their backs with a nonchalance that could not be in greater contrast to the self-absorbed fuss white women make over birth and breast feeding. He has “gone native” in a manner possible only for a bachelor, and makes a number of piquant observations from this unusual vantage point. In short, this is a most unusual and illuminating book. It is unnecessarily repetitive in making some of its more important points, but this is a small price to pay for such a refreshingly candid and level-headed report from a continent most of us will never visit. In a better world, a book like this would be distributed by a major publishing house. In the mean time, it is our pleasure to introduce Racism, Guilt, and Self-Deceit to the readers of AR. |
Effects of Mexico’s Drug War Hit El Paso
Effects of Mexico’s Drug War Hit El Paso
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Alfredo Corchado, Dallas Morning News, January 12, 2009
Touted as one of the safest cities of its size in the nation, El Paso is awakening to its southern neighbor’s bloody nightmare.
City officials say that drug-related violence across the border in Ciudad Juárez is having a growing impact in El Paso. And the situation across Mexico is deteriorating so fast that retired five-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey warned in a new assessment of a refugee catastrophe that could devastate border cities.
“Mexico is on the edge of abyss,” he said in a Dec. 28 report. “It could become a narco-state in the coming decade,” and the result could be a “surge of millions of refugees crossing the U.S. border to escape the domestic misery of violence, failed economic policy, poverty, hunger, joblessness, and the mindless cruelty and injustice of a criminal state.”
The report helped ignite what has already been a sense of urgency among city leaders. Last week, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution that called for solidarity with Juárez. The resolution ignited local and national controversy after City Councilman Beto O’Rourke added a line calling for a once unthinkable strategy to neutralize Mexico’s powerful cartels: legalizing drugs.
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On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón will meet in Washington and are expected to discuss the growing violence in Mexico and its impact on border communities, including El Paso-Juárez.
Few border communities have been hit as hard. More than 1,600 of the total 5,700 drug-related killings nationwide in 2008 took place in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s fourth largest city with a population of 1.7 million. In the first days of the new year, about 30 people have been killed.
El Paso, with a population of 600,000, sells itself as the third-safest city of its size in the United States. But Howard Campbell, a border anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, said El Paso and other U.S. cities provide the infrastructure for drug distribution—warehouses, money laundering centers, weapons and even hitmen, some of them American teenagers.
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The El Paso Police Department has said it knows of no kidnapping cases, and County Attorney José Rodríguez also said he knew of no cases.
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Although precise figures are unavailable, anecdotal accounts indicate that many violence-weary residents of Juárez are taking up permanent residency in El Paso and sending their children to its schools.
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Hotel occupancy rate, usually 87 percent, has risen in recent months to 95 percent, said Mayor John Cook.
“We have noticed that many Mexicans check into hotels for the weekend to rest from the constant violence,” he said.
EL Paso hasn’t felt the full brunt of he nationwide mortgage crisis yet, said real estate agent Juan Uribe, attributing the relatively healthy economy to the Fort Bliss military base and Mexican clients.
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Dozens of victims of violence—many of them U.S. citizens—were treated at El Paso’s County Thomason Hospital in 2008, costing taxpayers more than $1 million, city and county officials said.
At City Hall, O’Rourke is incredulous at the firestorm generated by the 12 words—“supporting an honest, open, national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics”—added to a resolution that passed unanimously.
Mayor Cook later vetoed the resolution, saying that such wording could “hurt El Paso’s federal legislative agenda.”
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Email Alfredo Corchado at acorchado@dallasnews.com.
(Posted on January 12, 2009)
Comments
In a related story, HLS Sec Chertoff said that the Feds are ready if Mexican drug violence spills north of the border.
“If?” And what border?
Really, “if” (rimshot) the dope wars spill north from Mexico into Aztlan, the Feds’ solution will be to disarm you.
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:03 PM on January 12
” Last week, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution that called for solidarity with Juárez”
How will this lame resolution help?
“On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderón will meet in Washington and are expected to discuss the growing violence in Mexico and its impact on border communities, including El Paso-Juárez.”
Translation:
On Monday, President-elect Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon will meet. President-elect Obama will promise a 100 billion foreign aid package to solve the problem. He will also promise to disband the Border Patrol and issue a Presidental order giving instant citizenship to anyone who makes it over the border.
Out going Sec of State Dr. Rice and incoming Sec of State Clinton made a conference call to Sr. Calderon and asked him to bring one of his checks with the account number on it so that the money can be directly deposited to his account.
Posted by Anonymous at 6:25 PM on January 12
If the US doesn’t legalize drugs as it did alcohol, the country will go the same way as it did during Prohibition, which is closer and closer to a gang controlled government.
Mexico surely will be taken over by the cartels, at least behind the scenes, but known to all. Most of their officials are in the pay of the drug gangs right now. About the only thing left to do is to move their influence right into the presidents circle of influence, and that will accomplish a political takeover for all intents and purposes. From there it will evolve into an overt narco state.
If that point is reached, the US will have to decide on unilateral action as it did in Iraq, but will the US be in its present geographical form after years of turmoil brought about by the depression?
If the US breaks up, with the Southwest going Hispanic, I think we will see the Southwest eventually ruled by drug lords, just like Mexico.
Legalizing drugs would put a halt to the advancement of cartel influence and take the profit out of drugs. It’s the only thing that will cause this cartel juggernaut to halt.
Posted by ice at 7:59 PM on January 12
