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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Hispanic</title>
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	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
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		<title>Police Shootings &amp; Race, in an Age of Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/police-shootings-race-in-an-age-of-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=police-shootings-race-in-an-age-of-lies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/police-shootings-race-in-an-age-of-lies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Dec 2014 05:53:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Black]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Crime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Police]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Race]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shooting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[White]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247054</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the statistics really say. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/police-badge.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247055" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/police-badge-263x350.jpg" alt="police-badge" width="234" height="311" /></a>In an era where public debate is replete with Big Lies, we are routinely treated to examples of shallow, insipid journalism dedicated to propping up the most nonsensical fictions imaginable. A case in point is a <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men"><span style="color: #011480;">piece</span></a> that appeared in the far-left periodical <i>Mother Jones</i>, titled “Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?” Purporting to explain the root causes of the racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the article&#8217;s author, <i>Mother Jones</i> editorial coordinator Jaeah Lee, presents a smattering of statistics—utterly devoid of context or analysis—as evidence that “the killing of Michael Brown by police … was no anomaly.”</p>
<p>For instance, Lee cites a 2007 <a href="http://www.colorlines.com/archives/2007/11/killed_by_the_cops.html"><span style="color: #011480;">study</span></a><i> </i>which found that in ten major cities “there were a disproportionately high number of African Americans among police shooting victims,” and <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&amp;tid=703"><span style="color: #011480;">another</span></a> which concluded that “black people are more likely than whites or Hispanics to experience a police officer&#8217;s threat or use of force.” To buttress these allegations, the author <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men"><span style="color: #011480;">quotes</span></a> Missouri ACLU official Jeffrey Mittman&#8217;s lamentation that “unarmed African-American men are shot and killed by police at an alarming rate,” and NAACP president Cornell Williams Brooks&#8217; claim that a destructive “culture of policing” is “rubbing salt into longstanding racial wounds” by targeting black people with “overwhelmingly major, often lethal &#8230; force.”</p>
<p>Apparently it never occurred to Ms. Lee, or to these other voices in her echo chamber, that there might be some significance in the fact that blacks, who are 13% of the U.S. population, themselves <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393676/finding-meaning-ferguson-heather-mac-donald"><span style="color: #011480;">commit</span></a> many more homicides than white and Hispanic perpetrators—<i>combined</i>. Young black males in particular commit homicide at nearly <i>ten times</i> the combined rate of their white and Hispanic counterparts. As Manhattan Institute scholar <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393676/finding-meaning-ferguson-heather-mac-donald"><span style="color: #011480;">Heather Mac Donald</span></a> explains, “That astronomically higher homicide-commission rate means that police officers are going to be disproportionately in black neighborhoods to fight crime, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects.” Blacks nationwide are also dramatically <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43"><span style="color: #011480;">overrepresented</span></a> in the commission of other serious crimes such as rape, robbery, and assault—precisely the types of offenses most likely to trigger a confrontation with police that could result in a fatality.</p>
<p>In her <i>Mother Jones</i> piece, Ms. Lee devotes considerable attention to New York City, where “<a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael-brown-ferguson-black-men"><span style="color: #011480;">more</span></a> black people have been shot by NYPD officers &#8230; than have Hispanics or whites.” But this begs an obvious question: “So what?” The same principle that applies to the United States as a whole, applies also to New York: W<span style="color: #272727;">hile blacks constitute 23% of the city&#8217;s population, they <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0514hm.html">commit</a> </span>two-thirds of all its violent crimes, including nearly 70% of all robberies and 80% of all shootings. And whites, who are 35% of the city’s population, commit just 5% of its violent crimes and a mere 1.8% of its shootings. Thus, blacks are statistically far more likely to be involved in volatile situations demanding police intervention. It&#8217;s really not very complicated.</p>
<p>The <i>Mother Jones</i> article also presents a chart with a racial breakdown of those who were shot and killed by New York City police between 2000 and 2011. Yet remarkably, the author makes no mention of the glaring <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393676/finding-meaning-ferguson-heather-mac-donald"><span style="color: #011480;">fact</span></a> that instances of police-on-Asian shootings are nearly invisible in this chart—indeed, <i>blacks, Hispanics, and whites alike</i> are far more likely than Asians to be shot in police encounters. What could explain this? If we were to apply Ms. Lee&#8217;s line of reasoning, we&#8217;d have no choice but to conclude that New York police officers, for some reason, feel less racial animus against Asians than they feel against everyone else. A more realistic explanation is that Asians in the city have very low crime rates and thus have comparatively little contact with police.</p>
<p>The most comprehensive information we have on the issue of police shootings and race in recent years comes from a 2011 Bureau of Justice Statistics <a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf"><span style="color: #011480;">study</span></a> that covers the period from 2003 to 2009. Of all suspects who are known to have been killed by law-enforcement officers during that time frame, 41.7% were white, 31.7% were black, and 20.3% were Hispanic. Also during that period, blacks accounted for about 38.5% of all arrests for violent crimes—i.e., the types of crimes most likely to lead to a potentially fatal confrontation with police. These numbers do not in any way suggest a lack of restraint by police in their dealings with black suspects. On the contrary, they suggest the exact opposite.</p>
<p>Funny how the real world rarely conforms to the certainties of the race-obsessed Left, isn&#8217;t it?</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ignoring Hip-Hop Ensures a Democratic President in 2016</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/ignoring-hip-hop-is-ensuring-a-democratic-president-in-2016/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ignoring-hip-hop-is-ensuring-a-democratic-president-in-2016</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/ignoring-hip-hop-is-ensuring-a-democratic-president-in-2016/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 04:25:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[entrepreneur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hip-hop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jay-Z]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[youth]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221676</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Right seals its own fate by rejecting a popular genre of music and its millions of fans.    ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Hip-Hop-graffiti1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221677" alt="Hip-Hop-graffiti1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Hip-Hop-graffiti1-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a></span><strong>[This is the third part of Ronn Torossian&#8217;s three-part series on why hip-hop and Jay-Z are worthy of America&#8217;s respect. To read part 1, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/bill-oreilly-is-wrong-jay-z-is-worthy-of-americas-respect/">click here,</a> for part 2, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/welcome-the-hip-hop-world-into-the-conservative-tent/">click here</a>.]</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Wise conservatives might ask why Barack Obama was re-elected despite terrible approval ratings. According to Gallup, Obama averaged 49.1% job approval during his first term in office.  His performance was subpar, he broke repeated promises, and the economy still struggled, yet he was handily re-elected. Despite the facts that it will be an 8-year Obama reign and that there’s no strong GOP candidate, conservatives continue to claim to know it all.</span></p>
<p>Conservatives don’t open their minds – and Democrats are likely to win the election again in 2016.  Conservative ideology shouldn’t be changed &#8211; it is right and the left is wrong on the issues.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">However, dictating to people what they should listen to and how they should dress is un-American. Hip-hop crosses all racial and ethnic lines – all across the country. Conservatives who endlessly criticize hip-hop are wrong and don’t understand what hip-hop is. They also don’t have a clue what their children are listening to, nor do they have any clue how to affect popular culture.  Wake up – the world has changed.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">On college campuses nationwide, youth listen to hip-hop. Leaving aside the fact that hip-hop crosses all racial boundaries, are these haters aware that hip-hop’s largest consumer base is the Hispanic community? With the continued growth of Hispanics in America, how does the GOP intend to capture these votes? Consider hip-hop. It is so hypocritical for pro-capitalism conservatives to<em> hate</em> on an entire industry which has such mass appeal.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hip-hop has empowered a whole new generation of people who were previously disenfranchised. Few American industries are more entrepreneurial than hip-hop. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Take these lyrics from Ma$e: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“Now what the hell is you lookin&#8217; for?/ Can&#8217;t a young man get money anymore?/ Let my pants sag down to the floor/ Really do it matter as long as I score?&#8221; </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In America, whether you wear a hoodie like Mark Zuckerberg or a 3-piece suit, indeed you can succeed. In a shock to some who read this site, kids today grow up wanting to be entrepreneurs, not doctors or lawyers. Hip-hop encourages that. We don’t want government hand-outs, we want to earn our money.  Conservatives should let hip-hop fans know they don’t judge and accept people who want to create their own rule book.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">So many of us, whether it is Jamie Glazov, the editor of Front Page Magazine, who came to this country as a refugee, or me, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.youtube.com/user/5WPRSpeakers">Ronn Torossian</a>,<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> who grew up in the Bronx with a single mother, need role models and people we can relate to. Kids today who don’t have huge opportunities need positive thinking – and so too do people of all ages. That’s offered in hip-hop.  Take the words of Eminem, who says, “You can do anything you set your mind to,” or the greatest rapper alive, Jay-Z, who says, “I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.” Dreaming big is important and hip-hop allows us to envision and realize those dreams. In contrast, Americans don’t see government officials as enviable no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.</span></p>
<p>My children are blessed to attend private school with very smart and well-connected kids and families – I wasn’t able to do that. Thankfully, they have so many opportunities I didn’t have, and the non-stop work ethic is something that is hard for many of us to associate with good ol’ boys in the GOP.  Can’t the GOP adopt some of the quotes and language from hip-hop to widen its base?</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sean “Diddy” Combs has a work ethic unlike anyone else. As he says, “I demand the best. Sleep is forbidden. If you work for me, you have to roll how I roll. I’m not really human. I’m like a machine.”  Or Will Smith, a brilliant actor, whom so many watched on TV as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Smith said, “The first step before anyone else in the world believes it, is that YOU have to believe it.”  They are so right &#8212; and we need to know we don’t need to go to Harvard to be successful and make it. Why not identify with these people and let them know that the conservative movement believes they should be rewarded for their hard work, by paying lower taxes and keeping more of their money? Conservatives would gain so many votes.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">How about this gem from Birdman? “Your work ethic has to be to the ceiling. You’re gonna get out of this what you’re putting into it.” And while the conservative movement struggles with ways to balance social values with a conservative ethos, aren’t there “values” related issues on which we can cooperate? </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Take Jay-Z’s great song “Mama I made it”: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“I told you one day I&#8217;d get you a home /I didn&#8217;t know it could possibly be in Rome/ Told me don&#8217;t wait on nobody get your own/ So with me myself and my microphone I made it. &#8230; Mama I made it.” </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Is it not completely hypocritical to attack these lyrics or values?  How many welfare cases have become millionaires because of hip-hop?  How many honest businessmen used to be criminals because of hip-hop?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sean “Diddy” Combs, whose father was killed when he was 33, was a criminal. Yet he says: “This is my plan. When I’m in the studio making a hit record, I’m not trying to make a hit record; I’m making one. This is what I studied. This is why I stay up twenty hours a day.” His children will have great opportunities in America – and that’s the American way.  True conservative values.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">LL Cool J, the rare Republican in hip-hop, said, “Success is achieved and maintained by those who try and keep trying.”  If one reads the comments from conservatives on recent FrontPage hip-hop related articles, we are destined to fail yet again amongst the young and amongst pop culture because our minds are closed. Conservatives aren’t trying – they know it all. It’s unfortunate.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A classic hip-hop song, one I remember hearing ad naseum in the Bronx in the 1980s, featured a rapper named Special Ed rapping, &#8220;I&#8217;m talented, yes I&#8217;m gifted/ Never boosted, never shoplifted/ I got the cash, but money ain&#8217;t nothing.&#8221; I remember hearing countless people understand the importance of making money and doing good things in the world.  Even if one is unconventional, he should seek to make big things happen. Closing out hip-hop completely is simply absurd and a definite way to close out major segments of America.  It’s a major mistake.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Every day before I go to work, I listen to Jay-Z’s “My 1</span><sup style="line-height: 1.5em;">st</sup><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Song,” as it inspires me to work hard and always challenge myself for more: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">I&#8217;m just, tryin to stay above water y&#8217;know/ Just stay busy, stay workin/ Puff told me like, the key to this joint/ The key to staying, on top of things/ is treat everything like it&#8217;s your first project, knahmsayin? Like it&#8217;s your first day like back when you was an intern/ Like, that&#8217;s how you try to treat things like, just stay hungry/ Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first/ And my thirst is the same as &#8211; when I came/ It&#8217;s my joy and my tears and my laughter it brings to me/ It&#8217;s my ev-ery-thing/ Treat my first like my last, and my last like my first/ And my thirst like the first song I sang.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">My </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.5wpr.com/">PR firm</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has grown because we will not be outworked – no one will ever try harder than us.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Obama will go down in history as one of the worst presidents ever. One of the reasons is that he has made an enemy out of anyone domestically who disagrees with him. The many conservatives who have issues with hip-hop should make more of an effort to understand the movement and why it appeals to so many who are outside of the norm. Don’t make them your enemies, especially since Hispanics keep growing in America.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The world has changed. There’s a multi-racial President in the White House.  It’s not all the same as it used to be. Conservatives should start figuring out how to move on and capture more youth, minority, and Hispanic votes, or they can forget winning an election for the near future. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The challenge, as Jay-Z put it in “A Dream,” is “Remind yourself. Nobody built like you, you design yourself.” The GOP needs to open the tent to people who understand the reality of America in 2014 and beyond.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>The Death of Amnesty 2013</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-death-of-amnesty-2013/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-death-of-amnesty-2013</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/the-death-of-amnesty-2013/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Jul 2013 04:50:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[comprehensive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gang of 8]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immigration reform]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rubio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vote]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196510</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[America dodges a bullet. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/160245090-620x407.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-196514" alt="160245090-620x407" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/160245090-620x407-450x295.jpg" width="270" height="177" /></a>If the rumors coming out of Washington, D.C. are accurate, amnesty will die a long, slow death in the House of Representatives. According to <i>Politico,</i> Republican leaders got together yesterday to <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/310179-carney-immigration-reform-has-always-been-an-uphill-battle">plan</a> how they would deliver the news to the public. The current thinking among the House resisters was best expressed by Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who represents those most adamantly opposed to the legislation. He insisted the Senate plan is about helping “elites who want cheap labor, Democratic power brokers, and those who hire illegal labor.” “It would hurt Republicans, and I don’t think you can make an argument otherwise,” he added.</p>
<p>On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/immigration-overhaul-where-to-go-from-here/">reiterated</a> a point he has made many times before, namely that he has no plans to take up the Senate bill in his chamber. “The House is going to do its own job on developing an immigration bill,” he said. “The American people expect that we’ll have strong border security in place before we begin the process of legalizing and fixing our legal immigration system.”</p>
<p>It is not just the American people in general who want strong border security to be put in place before anything else is passed. A new <a href="http://www.mclaughlinonline.com/lib/sitefiles/National_Hispanic_Presentation_06-21-13_-_FOR_RELEASE.pdf">survey</a> taken by GOP pollster John McLaughlin reveals that a large majority of <i>Hispanic</i> voters believe the border should be 90 percent secure before any legal status is granted to illegal aliens. Registered Hispanic voters backed that proposal by a margin of 60 percent to 34 percent, while Hispanic adults in general backed the proposal by a 60 percent to 32 percent margin. Hispanic voters also opposed granting illegal aliens the ability to obtain federal benefits, including healthcare, while they are going through the process of legalization, and before the 90 percent goal is achieved, by a margin of 56 percent to 40 percent.</p>
<p>There was a <a href="http://nationalreview.com/corner/352903/poll-60-percent-hispanics-back-enforcement-first-approach-immigration-reform-andrew">divergence</a> between registered and non-registered voters regarding two other issues. Employment verification to determine the status of potential employee was supported by 64 percent of registered voters, compared with just 46 percent of non-registered Hispanics. Increased border security was approved by 55 percent of registered voters, but only 45 percent of non-registered voters.</p>
<p>Yet the most telling part of the poll was a repudiation of the idea &#8220;comprehensive immigration reform&#8221; would constitute some sort of political redemption for Republicans. A whopping 65 percent believe that the Republican Party discriminates against Latinos and Hispanics, 61 percent believe the Republican party doesn&#8217;t care about people like them, and 62 percent believe Republicans are against immigration because they don&#8217;t want any more Hispanics in the country.</p>
<p>If there is a bright side, only 29 percent said the would never vote for a Republican, and 46 percent agree with the statement that there are &#8220;new forces in the Republican Party like Senator Marco Rubio who are fighting for immigration reform and fair treatment for Latinos.&#8221; Yet 39 percent still believe &#8220;it is the same old Republican Party and is as prejudiced as always against Latinos.&#8221;</p>
<p>Thus, despite all the media, squishy Republican, and Democratic hoopla attempting to convince Republicans that they are <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/243985/if-immigration-reform-fails-the-gop-may-be-doomed">&#8220;doomed&#8221;</a> if they fail to pass this package, their battle to win the hearts and minds of Hispanics is <i>still</i> an uphill battle at best. Furthermore, it may not be a battle worth winning if it alienates their base. As the <i>Huffington Post&#8217;s</i> Charles Babington <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/27/republican-party-base_n_3341811.html">explains,</a> &#8220;Republicans will go nowhere if they lose a hard-core conservative every time they pick up a new unaligned voter with a more moderate message.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet more importantly, Republicans have lost sight of the big picture in two ways. First, as journalist Steven Sailer <a href="http://www.vdare.com/articles/census-bureau-refutes-comprehensive-immigration-reform-mantra-obama-won-because-of-old-blac">reveals</a>, Census Bureau data, taken after every national election, shows exit polls following the 2012 election overstated the share of the Hispanic vote &#8212; just as they have done in every election since 2000. And not just the exit polls. Sailer notes the mainstream media also exaggerated the Hispanic share of the 2012 vote by a factor of almost 20 percent. In fact, the percentage of Latinos casting ballots declined from 49.9 percent in 2008 to 48 percent in 2012, and the number of Hispanics who claimed to be eligible but didn’t bother to vote jumped from 9.8 million to 12.1 million. Thus, the overall Hispanic vote in 2012 accounted for only 8.4 percent of the total, not the 10 percent as originally reported.</p>
<p>Furthermore, no Republican presidential candidate has won a majority of the Hispanic vote in <a href="http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-06-12.html">more than</a> 50 years. George W. Bush reached the highest percentage in that span of time, getting <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2005/06/27/hispanics-and-the-2004-election/">40 percent</a> in the 2004 election. Even after Ronald Reagan signed the Simpson-Mazzoli bill in 1986, granting unambiguous amnesty to 2.7 million illegal aliens, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote actually declined by from 37 percent to 30 percent in the 1988 election. Yet despite that reality, George H.W. Bush won in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1988">landslide.</a></p>
<p>In other words, the pernicious notion that the Hispanic vote is critical to Republican success has been grossly exaggerated, a reality made evident by Byron York. York revealed that if Mitt Romney had <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-winning-hispanic-vote-would-not-be-enough-for-gop/article/2528730">won</a> a record-shattering <i>70 percent</i> of the Hispanic vote in 2012, he still would have lost the election.</p>
<p>The other part of the big picture Republicans have lost sight of revolves around the idea disseminated by the establishment wing of their own party, which has promoted the idea that Republicans should vote for comprehensive reform because Hispanics are essentially &#8220;natural Republicans&#8221; who just don&#8217;t realize it yet. This is unadulterated nonsense. Hispanics overwhelmingly <a href="http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/09/18/latinos-support-obamacare-over-romney-healthcare-proposal-poll-says/">support</a> ObamaCare by a margin of 62 percent, and big government by a <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2012/04/PHC-Hispanic-Identity.pdf">margin</a> of 75 percent, rising to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/sorry-gop-immigration-reform-won%E2%80%99t-win-you-the-latino-vote/">81 percent</a> among Latino immigrants. Politically speaking, 30 percent of them are self-described liberals, compared to 21 percent of the general population. And, according to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of Hispanics have a <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/12-28-11-2/">negative view</a> of capitalism, higher than white and black Americans.</p>
<p>None of those are remotely &#8220;natural Republican&#8221; positions.</p>
<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean Republicans should write off the Hispanic vote. The same McLaughlin survey mentioned above notes that immigration reform isn’t as important to Hispanics as healthcare, which ranked second, and the economy, which is issue number one. The rapidly unraveling healthcare bill is so corrosive to Democrats that the president has kicked the rule of law to the curb and unilaterally postponed the employer mandate by one year to get through the 2014 election. Republicans should make a pitched effort to offer <i>every</i> ethnic group a viable alternative. As for the economy, the current official <a href="http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t03.htm">unemployment rate</a> for Hispanics is 9.1 percent, compared to 7.6 percent for the nation as a whole. Thus, Republicans must also make the case that legalizing at least an additional 11 million illegal aliens &#8212; a number many consider a low estimate &#8212; will make it even harder for Hispanic citizens to find jobs.</p>
<p>More importantly, Republicans need to realize that the public in general has no use for a Senate immigration bill that has been <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/22/New-version-of-amnesty-bill-grants-Big-Sis-authority-to-completely-ignore-border-security-provisions-in-immigration-bill">revealed</a> as a complete fraud with regard to border control. Virtually every aspect of it can be waived by the Secretary of Homeland Security, absent any repercussions. This reality flies in the face of CNN/ORC international survey that <a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/june-18-2013/cnn-poll-62-say-border-security-needs-be-first-priority-immigration-policy.html">finds</a> 62 percent of Americans believe border security should be the main focus of U.S. immigration policy, compared to just 36 percent who want a so-called pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens to be the foremost priority.</p>
<p>Yet the most likely reason the Senate bill will die in the House can be boiled down to one word: comprehensive. Comprehensive reform, whether it is <a href="http://obamacarewatcher.org/articles/172">2,400</a> unread pages of comprehensive healthcare reform or 1190 unread pages of comprehensive immigration reform, is riddled with special political deals, exceptions, loopholes, and waivers &#8212; all of which can be manipulated with impunity.</p>
<p>Much to their overwhelming dismay, a majority of Americans have discovered the disturbing details of ObamaCare,<i> after</i> it was passed, exactly as Democrats intended. House Republicans have no incentive whatsoever to repeat that folly, given the realities of the Hispanic vote’s current impact, the fact that many of their members represent districts with insignificant levels of Hispanic population, and the possibility that the results of the mid-term election in 2014 may put them in a far better bargaining position than they are in now.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the fact that border control as a stand-alone policy is completely anathema to Democrats should tell them everything they need to know about the pitfalls of comprehensive immigration reform. If enacted now, it will be carried out by a president with no respect for the separation of powers, an Attorney General presiding over the most racially-polarized Justice Department in memory, and a clueless DHS Secretary.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/310179-carney-immigration-reform-has-always-been-an-uphill-battle">said</a> that passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill has &#8220;always been an uphill battle.&#8221; If House Republicans care about the future of the nation, it should stay that way until a <i>genuinely</i> sensible series of reforms &#8212; each standing <i>individually</i> on its own merits &#8212; can be enacted.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Left&#8217;s Quest for Texas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-lefts-quest-for-texas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-lefts-quest-for-texas</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:44:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Dems lay the ground work for the next Alamo in hopes of turning the Lone Star State blue. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-lefts-quest-for-texas/redistricting-illustration-2/" rel="attachment wp-att-179876"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179876" title="redistricting-illustration" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/redistricting-illustration1-450x322.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="193" /></a>In 1960, Nixon beat Kennedy in California following up on Eisenhower’s decisive wins over Adlai Stevenson. Nixon won California again in 1968, beating out Humphrey, and then McGovern in 1972. Ford held on to California in 1976, Reagan won it decisively in two elections and Bush held on to it against Dukakis.</p>
<p>All that ended in 1992. No Republican has won California since.</p>
<p>With the largest number of electoral votes in the country, California played a decisive role in Republican presidential victories.  Texas, with the second largest number of electoral votes, a state which leaned Democrat around the same time that California learned Republican, has become the ace in the hole. And if the Democrats can turn Texas blue, then it may be a long time until we see a Republican in the White House.</p>
<p>Jimmy Carter was the last Democrat to win Texas and he was the Democrat who lost Texas. But today’s Democrats are hoping that Hillary Clinton can win Texas back.</p>
<p>On paper Texas does not seem very shaky. Mitt Romney, a Massachusetts moderate, pulled in better numbers than McCain and nearly matched George W. Bush’s numbers in 2000. Romney performed even better than Ronald Reagan did when he first took Texas in 1980. That alone is a sign of how red Texas has gotten in the last thirty years.</p>
<p>So why worry? Demographics are one reason. Texas is approaching the same demographic tipping point as California. Even with Republican 4/10 Latino vote scores, the Texas future is inevitably tilting in a Democratic direction even without the proposed illegal alien amnesty. The demographic tipping point won’t arrive in 2016, but the voter registration and community organizing tipping point might.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7787">Battleground Texas is the new Democratic strategy</a> for doing to the Lone Star State what General Santa Anna tried to do in his time. Their strategy depends on heavy doses of voter registration and community organizing. The two are largely interconnected in urban areas where the Democratic Party’s political machine links together social services, community groups and bloc votes.</p>
<p>In 2012, that machine took a great leap forward by merging community organizer tactics with dot com data mining operations and corporate email lists for a technocratic community organizing machine. With both sides crediting voter turnout and smart data for the win, the Democratic Party is feeling bold enough to head on into Texas.</p>
<p>Battleground Texas may be bravado, a feint to put the Republican Party on the defensive and get it to commit valuable resources to fighting for its formerly safe territories, but it may also be the real deal as a Democratic Party convinced that it can name its own price and do anything with a bunch of emails and a lot of PACs sets the stage for the next Alamo.</p>
<p>Jeremy Bird, Obama’s national campaign field director, who scored big with voter registration in western swing states like Colorado and Nevada, is hoping to help Battleground Texas do the same thing. But Battleground Texas’s actual executive director is Jenn Brown, an Obama campaign veteran, without much local experience, and while its digital director, Christina Gomez, does have that experience, its digital footprint is underwhelming, from its sloppy website to its chummy insider Twitter accounts.</p>
<p>Battleground Texas is mainly talking about itself and its plans for making Texas blue. That may feed the dreams of its New York and California donors, but there’s little there to appeal to non-partisan Texans. Battleground Texas has the usual spin about racial underrepresentation and voting rights indicating that its only real strategy is the race card. And while the race card has yet to wear out, expecting it to tilt Texas over in time for 2016 may be unrealistic.</p>
<p>While Bird promises that he can turn Texas into another Virginia, Texas is a very different place than Virginia. Battleground Texas smacks of an elitist national attempt to bypass the Texas Democratic Party with a lot of college students and not a whole lot of knowledge of the battleground territory. Unlike the old Obama organization which did its dirty work without constantly boasting about it, Battleground Texas has a borrowed ten-gallon hat full of bravado and not a whole lot of cattle, people or anything else to show for it.</p>
<p>Is Battleground Texas overreaching with its plans to spend tens of millions of dollars for a long shot plan to shift Texas? Tellingly Bird is counting on California and New York donors to buy into his plan to turn Texas blue. Texas doesn’t have a shortage of rich Democrats willing to plow money into the party. One of them is financing the Giffords gun control PAC. And yet Bird seems to think that not enough Texas donors will be willing to help Battleground Texas cover its grandiose budget. And that may be because even Texas liberals know that a grand project for the state this decade will be wasted money and effort.</p>
<p>Romney won Texas by 1.2 million votes. Those are formidable numbers and countering them will take big budgets and armies of volunteers that will have to go well outside their Austin comfort zones. Obama picked up Austin’s Travis County, Dallas County, Houston’s Harris County and El Paso County. Voter registration could no doubt find new voters there or duplicate voters, as the Dem machine has a way of doing, but it’s not as if the machine hasn’t already done a pretty thorough job of finding Dem voters in Houston, Austin and Dallas.</p>
<p>While the Democratic Party may be betting that forcing the GOP to fight for Texas will divert their resources, an extensive Democratic engagement with Texas may divert theirs even more. Battleground Texas offers a big dream to lure bicoastal billionaires into splurging money that Democrats could use to win actual battleground states.</p>
<p>A Democratic struggle for Texas backed by big money and bigger ambitions may be another case of fighting a land war in Asia or more aptly, the Blitzkrieg into Russia, with some initially deceptive successes leading to wasted resources and national defeat.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Mallory Factor Exposes Big Labor&#8217;s War on America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mallory-factor-exposes-big-labors-war-on-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=mallory-factor-exposes-big-labors-war-on-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:41:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Conservative warrior explains how union shadow bosses can be stopped at the Freedom Center's West Coast Retreat. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/mallory-factor-exposes-big-labors-war-on-america/mallory-factor-color-photo/" rel="attachment wp-att-179775"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-179775" title="Mallory Factor color photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mallory-Factor-color-photo.jpg" alt="" width="138" height="133" /></a>Editor’s note: Below is the video of author Mallory Factor’s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2013 West Coast Retreat. The event was held February 22nd-24th at the Terranea Resort in Palos Verdes, California. A transcript of the speech follows.</em></p>
<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/60542325" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/60542325">Mallory Factor</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user15333690">DHFC</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Mallory Factor:</strong> I don&#8217;t know if you know how unions run elections and are involved in elections.  I&#8217;d like to give you an idea of how that works.</p>
<p>When a union official was talking to the head of elections for the union, he was talking &#8212; he said &#8212; how did it go?  He said &#8212; well, I got some good news for you, and I got some bad news for you.  Said &#8212; well, what could be good, if there&#8217;s bad news?  Said &#8212; well, the bad news is that the guy we didn&#8217;t want to win got 53 percent of the vote.  Said &#8212; well, what could the good news be?  Said &#8212; the guy we wanted to win we got 54 percent of the vote for.</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>That tells you everything you need to know about unions and elections.</p>
<p>I am just deeply honored to be here with you today.  And I mean, you have to thank David Horowitz for all that he&#8217;s done over the years.  You have to.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>And likewise, Mike Finch &#8212; I don&#8217;t know how he does all of this.  I mean, that is &#8211;</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p>But I thank all of you, really, the great Americans that support the Freedom Center.  Your work is vital to keeping our country free and for preserving and defending our American way of life.  I can&#8217;t thank you enough for having me at this terrific gathering.</p>
<p>The first time I attended a Freedom Center event was this past November at Restoration Weekend.  Once I came to that forum, I could not believe that I hadn&#8217;t been there before.  It was like coming home.  And now, coming back together with you all here in California, it&#8217;s an even richer experience.  Mike, I guess I&#8217;m going to have to write another book so I can be invited back next year to these events.</p>
<p>My friends, today I want to give you an overview of the landscape of government unions in America, and why government unions are a huge problem for our nation.  I covered some of this ground at the last meeting, when I shared with you some of my discoveries in researching &#8220;Shadow Bosses,&#8221; which is my recent book on how unions impact our government.</p>
<p>But today, I&#8217;m going to give you some new information for the first time.  I&#8217;m going to share with you how the unions impacted the 2012 elections and how they secured victory for President Obama.  I&#8217;ll explain what we need to do to have a fighting chance in the next election cycle.</p>
<p>First, all the things that you&#8217;ve heard about private sector unions are true &#8212; the violence, the corruption, the feather bedding, the wasteful rules, the graft.  But what I discovered in writing &#8220;Shadow Bosses&#8221; is that government employee unions are far, far worse for this nation.  Private sector unions have to make sure that their demands are not so excessive that the employer is driven out of business.</p>
<p>Hostess&#8217;s bankruptcy &#8212; you know, the death of the Twinkie &#8212; is just the latest example of what happens when unions representing private sector workers make unreasonable demands on the employer.  Unions end up negotiating members out of a job, as 18,500 Hostess workers learned firsthand.  By the way, it was just announced that the unions that bankrupted Hostess will be receiving generous government subsidies.</p>
<p>But the picture&#8217;s entirely different for government employee unions.  Outrageous concessions to these unions don&#8217;t drive the government out of business and throw union members out of jobs.  Unwieldy union contracts just make government immensely bigger and more burdensome to you, the taxpayer.</p>
<p>Republicans and Democrats used to agree that collective bargaining for government employees is harmful to our nation.  One of the most pro-union Presidents in American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, said that collective bargaining for government workers was wrong.  Strikes against our government were &#8220;unthinkable and intolerable.&#8221;  This is what Roosevelt believed.  Even union officials thought the idea of a government employee union was a nonstarter.</p>
<p>George Meany, the former head of the AFL-CIO, actually said, and I quote &#8212; &#8220;it&#8217;s impossible to bargain collectively with government.&#8221;  The Democrats then realized that they could use the unions as a piggybank for their election campaigns.  Suddenly, Democrats were able to get campaign support for unions in exchange for supporting the union agenda.  In January 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order to give collective bargaining to federal workers.  And since then, government employee unions have taken over the union movement and even the entire Democrat Party.</p>
<p>The power and the money in today&#8217;s labor movement is centered on government employee unions.  Unions elect their own bosses.  They elect government officials and legislators who grow the size of our government, hire more government employees, and give these employees higher pay and benefits.  Then unions keep government inefficient by preventing it from reorganizing, from streamlining and from rightsizing.</p>
<p>There will be a tipping point when our government gets so big and government unions get so entrenched that America will no longer be able to support the enormous cost of running our government.  And, my friends, we are rapidly approaching that point.</p>
<p>You may&#8217;ve heard that union membership is down.  And you may expect that the problems of unions are just going to go away naturally over time.  It&#8217;s true &#8212; less than seven percent of private sector workers are now union members.  But for government workers, the picture&#8217;s completely different.  Of the &#8212; it&#8217;s mindboggling &#8212; 20.5 million government workers, already 42 percent are represented by a union.</p>
<p>Teachers, firemen, policemen and postal workers &#8212; they&#8217;re the most unionized government employees.  And government unions now represent almost every type of government worker, including office workers in state and local government, Treasury workers, state university professors.  But even the Peace Corps workers, zookeepers and NASA scientists!</p>
<p>Most people believe that while many other types of government workers are now represented by big labor, our military and our national security employees can&#8217;t be unionized.  My friends, is that really true?  Not at all.  Many of our vital national security employees have already been unionized &#8212; border patrol agents, FEMA, immigration and customs agents, TSA and civilian military personnel.  All these workers have been unionized, leaving our nation exposed to union control, strikes and work slowdowns.  Without almost anyone noticing.  Twenty percent of our entire military, our Defense Department&#8217;s workforce; 60 percent of our civilian military, and over 40 percent of Homeland Security has already been unionized.</p>
<p>One of the main arguments against privatizing government functions within the national security sphere, [as] these functions are too important to be subject to market forces.  But if these critical functions shouldn&#8217;t be subject to Adam Smith&#8217;s invisible hand, they certainly shouldn&#8217;t be subject to the iron fist of the labor unions.</p>
<p>Unions are on our military bases, they&#8217;re inside our Pentagon.  Unions are determining workplace rules and norms, filing grievances and influencing personnel decisions at these sensitive job sites.  One Defense Department attorney alerted us to a grievance filed by the union on a military base &#8212; the price of a can of soda had been raised from 50 to 55 cents.  And this type of grievance is filed all the time, wasting our military&#8217;s limited resources.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s another danger &#8212; organizing any group of employees makes strikes among them more likely.  Strikes are illegal for federal workers and many state and local government workers.  But that doesn&#8217;t prevent strikes from happening.  New York City transit workers, Tacoma, Washington teachers; Detroit teachers, Chicago teachers, postal workers &#8212; they&#8217;ve all gone on strike illegally.</p>
<p>The legendary Al Shanker, former head of the American Federation of Teachers, explained.  And I quote &#8212; &#8220;One of the greatest reasons for the effectiveness of the public employees&#8217; strike is the fact that it is illegal.&#8221;  When the Professional Air Traffic Controllers struck in 1981 &#8212; in violation, of course, of federal law &#8212; PATCO President Robert Poli snapped, &#8220;The only illegal strike is an unsuccessful one.&#8221;  And that&#8217;s still true today.</p>
<p>As unions gain a stranglehold over our government, we lose something as a nation.  We lose control over our national security employees to private entities &#8212; labor unions.  Unions are private entities working to maximize their profits.  These private entities drive big government spending and overregulation of our economy.  They are also having a greater and greater influence over who wins our elections.</p>
<p>During the 2012 elections, unions doubled down on political spending.  And they did this to build a monumental voter registration, electioneering, and get-out-the-vote machine.  As a result, the unions almost singlehandedly won reelection for Obama in 2012.  People think that the Labor Movement is a subsidiary of the Democratic Party &#8212; they&#8217;re wrong.  Today, the Democratic Party is a subsidiary of the Labor Movement.</p>
<p>Right after the election, Richard Trumka, head of the huge Federation of Unions, the AFL-CIO, claimed credit for Obama&#8217;s victory.  The huge push by the nation&#8217;s labor unions, Trumka claimed, gave President Obama Ohio, Wisconsin and Nevada, which carry 34 electoral votes combined.  And I quote &#8212; without the unions, &#8220;none of those states would be in the President&#8217;s column.&#8221;  This is what Trumka puffed.  My friends, he&#8217;s right.</p>
<p>Unions practically ran the ground game for the entire Democrat Party.  Matter of fact, I think Obama should hold a state dinner for Trumka.  He should, at the very least, continue to meet with Trumka, as he did in his first term, more often than he does with most members of his cabinet.</p>
<p>Unions spent $500 million on President Obama&#8217;s reelection campaign.  A single union, the SEIU, which Obama had worked for, spent $74 million to reelect President Obama, making it Obama&#8217;s largest outside spender, dwarfing spending by any PAC.</p>
<p>But the unions&#8217; biggest contribution to President Obama&#8217;s reelection was the manpower and organization on the ground.  AFL-CIO registered more than 450,000 new voters leading up to the election, mostly in the swing states.  AFL-CIO volunteers knocked on almost 14 million doors nationwide during the election.  And this voter canvassing and mobilization machine was not shut down on Election Day.  AFL-CIO pledged to build a long-term year-round mobilization structure to keep its issues on the front burner all year long, not just during the election season.</p>
<p>Unions increased their reach over the electorate by using powers available to them under the Supreme Court&#8217;s 2010 Citizens United case.  Liberals complain that this case gave corporations more leeway to spend on politics.  But the real story in the 2012 election was about what this case did for the unions, not the corporations.</p>
<p>As a result of the Citizens United decision, unions can buy advertising and campaign materials for candidates using their immense dues income.  And by the way, it&#8217;s a little over $14 billion a year, which we were able to show in &#8220;Shadow Bosses.&#8221;  And for the first time in this election, unions were able to canvass and call voters who were not their members as a result of the changes under Citizens United.  All these changes meant that unions could vastly increase their voter canvassing and reach in battleground states and swing more union and nonunion voters alike to President Obama and, of course, other people on the Democrat ticket.</p>
<p>In the battleground states, unions overloaded the political landscape with volunteers, many of whom they actually paid for their efforts.  Unions put 400,000 members on the streets to work for Obama.</p>
<p>Rather than go into a whole bunch of states, let&#8217;s just take one state as an example &#8212; Ohio.  The unions in Ohio gave the Democrat Party use of 1,800 local union offices as outposts for the Obama Campaign.  These local union offices have been operating for years, engaged in the community and in community organizing, and they&#8217;ve done this on a year-round basis.  The fact that the Obama Campaign used permanent offices with deep roots in the community gave it a huge edge over the Republican ticket, which largely used offices just set up for the presidential campaign.</p>
<p>The Obama Campaign also used local unions to get into the workplaces all over the state.  Local unions appointed worksite coordinators for each unionized workplace in Ohio, as well as in other swing states.  But we&#8217;re using Ohio as an example.  The coordinators ran extensive worksite leafleting and education programs &#8212; education programs &#8212; to reach voters at their place of work.  My friends, Republicans didn&#8217;t have anything comparable in terms of workplace access, because they don&#8217;t control workplaces like the unions do.</p>
<p>Unions registered, in just Ohio, 70,000 new voters and worked to get almost all of them to the polls.  And in the last four days before the election, just in Ohio, union representatives contacted 800,000 Ohio voters.  One union in particular, the SEIU, had a very carefully targeted plan to drive voter turnout in Ohio.  With 2,300 full-time volunteers on the ground in just Ohio, in the last days of the campaign, the SEIU &#8212; Service Employees International Union &#8212; focused on African-American and Latino voters.</p>
<p>The SEIU also purchased radio ads and targeted calls aimed specifically at communities that vote reliably for President Obama.  The message aimed at the African Americans urged use of early voting procedures to overcome alleged voter intimidation at the polls.  They said, and I quote &#8212; &#8220;Those who don&#8217;t vote are playing into the hands of those who are trying to suppress the vote.&#8221;  The result?  In Ohio, African-American voters increased from 11 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 15 percent this past election, which alone made the difference in winning the state for President Obama.  Obama won this state by about 103,000 votes.  And unions made the difference multiple times over.</p>
<p>Unions have spent so much money on political action that they&#8217;ve developed very sophisticated political operations.  If we don&#8217;t counter it effectively, the union political machine at some point could turn the Democrats into an undefeatable majority.</p>
<p>And, my friends, what type of voter registration, canvassing and get-out-the-vote machine did the Republican Party control in 2012?  Nothing, nothing even approaching the scale of this well-coordinated and well-funded union political machine.  Republicans matched the Democrats dollar-for-dollar in 2012, with each side spending about $1.2 billion on the presidential election.  But Republicans didn&#8217;t have the benefit of using year-round field offices run by local unions.</p>
<p>And as we know, Republicans probably also, shall we say, prioritized the wrong things in their spending.  For example, the Romney Campaign spent close to $500 million on mostly negative TV ads, almost all in the battleground states.  Republican spending on TV for Romney exceeded Democrat spending on Obama ads by about $100 million.  But a plethora of 30-second spots didn&#8217;t change hearts and minds.  TV ads couldn&#8217;t counter the years the unions have invested in political infrastructure and community organizing, which they shared with the Obama Campaign.</p>
<p>If the Republican Party is going to survive as a major party in national politics, the party will have to build up its own political infrastructure that operates on a year-round basis, particularly in the battleground states.  It would take a huge investment and years of work to develop a political arm for the Republican Party that could compete with the unions.</p>
<p>My friends, we may be right on the issues.  But Republicans cannot hope to win elections without matching the boots on the ground that the unions provided for the Democrats in the battleground states.  The Republican Party is going to have to look to a new paradigm to win 2016, and the time to start is right now.</p>
<p>Since the November 2012 elections, we&#8217;ve been told again and again that Republicans will have to secure Latino votes to win future presidential elections.  Our pundits debate which potential GOP candidate will attract Latinos, and they suggest changes in our policies to appeal to this growing demographic group.</p>
<p>But while Republicans have been talking about how to court the Latino community, unions have pursued Latinos directly.  Unions have been bringing Latinos into the union movement and have been selling the Democrat Party to Latinos and two other groups as well.</p>
<p>To do this, unions have changed their historic approach to immigrants and immigration.  Up through the 1970s, unions were openly hostile to immigrants.  Unions considered immigrants strike-breakers and competitors who undercut union workers on wages and benefits.  But now unions are even treating the 11 million undocumented workers as potential union members and recruiting them.</p>
<p>Unions have made immigration reform one of their core issues today.  The SEIU has committed 2.1 million members for the fight for immigration reform and is planning extensive lobbying, rallies and member education on immigration.  AFL-CIO Trumka embraces President Obama&#8217;s Pathway to Citizenship for illegal immigrants.  Trumka explained that the President understands that empowering immigrant workers &#8212; and I&#8217;m quoting &#8212; &#8220;is a win for all working people.&#8221;  Translation &#8212; turning immigrants into union members is a win for the shadow bosses and the labor unions.</p>
<p>Unions are courting immigrant and nonimmigrant Latinos to bolster their numbers.  A number of unions, especially SEIU, have aligned themselves with immigrant groups and are actively organizing workplaces which rely on immigrant labor &#8212; you know, workplaces such as &#8212; that have janitors, home healthcare workers, domestic workers &#8212; they&#8217;ve all been unionized under this new initiative.</p>
<p>And my friends, the strategy&#8217;s working!  Nationwide &#8212; and we&#8217;ve just been able to put this together &#8212; unions have gained a net of 156,000 Latino members in 2012, many of them immigrants.  That also is about $150 million in additional dues, too.</p>
<p>While union membership declined in many states, union membership grew in California and in right-to-work states &#8212; Congressman Gohmert &#8212; like Texas and other Southwestern states, which the AFL-CIO credits to increases in Latino union membership.  These gains are critical.  And this is going to shock you all, because this is a new number &#8212; because unions have lost in 2012 an astounding 547,000 white members.</p>
<p>By building immigrant Latino membership, unions are riding the tide of growth in the Latino population.  But at the same time, unions are also cementing an alliance between Latinos and the Democrat Party.  It&#8217;s just another way unions are working hand-in-glove with the Democrats to achieve a permanent Democratic majority.</p>
<p>I want to conclude now, fairly rapidly.  Because I see my time is going pretty fast, and I want to take some Q&amp;As.</p>
<p>The key to curbing the influence of labor unions is to cut off the flow of the money into their coffers.  There are a number of ways to do this.  And the best way to do it is by strengthening workers&#8217; rights.  States can break up union monopoly over government employees, as Wisconsin did.  States can enact right-to-work laws, as Indiana and Michigan did.  The result in each case is fewer workers paying dues because they&#8217;re not forced to pay dues to keep their job, which means less income for the unions.</p>
<p>The big takeaway, though, isn&#8217;t just reducing union revenues; it&#8217;s increasing workers&#8217; freedom &#8212; increasing their freedom to make a decision if they want a union in their workplace, if they want to have a union represent them.  Believe it or not, of all the union members in government, less than seven percent ever voted for or against a union.</p>
<p>These members have had almost no rights.  And that&#8217;s how we have to approach this.  And they need to be able to decide, the workers need to be able to decide, if they want to pay a union.  When workers are given these rights, unions will diminish, or unions will have to do something better to serve the workers.  They&#8217;re going to have to do something for them to join them.</p>
<p>At the same time, the Republican Party needs to come up with an action plan to match the superior forces on the ground that unions provide to the Democrat Party.  It&#8217;s not just enough to spend money on media and for the consultants to collect their 15 percent, and hope that this counteracts the sea of volunteers.  [What] we need is in-person voter contacts that the unions do so well.  The Republican Party needs to develop its own year-round political infrastructure on the ground.  It&#8217;ll be expensive, it&#8217;ll take time, but we need to get started.</p>
<p>My friends, it&#8217;s going to take us all to stop labor unions and the Democrats from taking America further down the path to socialism and decline, and they&#8217;re doing this with each successive election.  You, my friends here &#8212; you here are the heroes in this battle.  And your support of the Freedom Center is just one part of it.  You&#8217;re the people that are leading the fight to make sure government is held accountable to the people.</p>
<p>Our greatest battles are ahead of us.  The fight will be long and hard.  But with the help of each of you, we can ensure America&#8217;s freedom and America&#8217;s prosperity into the future.</p>
<p>I want to thank all of you for what you do to keep America the greatest country on earth.  Thank you.</p>
<p>(Applause)</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Speaker:</strong> Mallory, thank you very much.  Tremendously illuminating.</p>
<p>Can you comment on union elections, undocumented or illegal aliens, and the policies of the INS?</p>
<p><strong>Mallory Factor:</strong> Thank you.</p>
<p>Something just came out over the past couple of days.  And unions are willing to go very far to attract immigrants to their ranks.  In a dramatic new development, unions are actually protecting immigrants who are potential union members against America&#8217;s own labor and immigration laws.</p>
<p>A recent example involves a company called Palermo&#8217;s Villa.  It&#8217;s a Milwaukee, Wisconsin frozen pizza manufacturer that sells to Costco.  The United Steelworkers have been trying to organize the largely Hispanic workforce at Palermo with the help of [Foch es] de la Frontera, which is an immigration rights group.  In the midst of these organizational efforts, Palermo faced an immigration audit which required the company to ask each worker for proof of work eligibility.  The company was compelled and did fire workers who did not comply, as federal law requires.  Makes sense, right?  Workers struck over this eligibility verification.  It&#8217;s astonishing that they did.</p>
<p>Even more astonishing is how the federal government responded to the labor dispute of them striking.  After union officials complained about the firings to the Obama Administration, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, halted its immigration investigation against Palermo.</p>
<p>Was ICE satisfied that Palermo had resolved its immigration issue?  That&#8217;s not it.  You can&#8217;t make this up, this is just shocking &#8212; an agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Labor Department actually requires this &#8212; if a union and an employer are engaged in a dispute over organizing workers, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is barred from pursuing an immigration investigation of the workplace under this agreement.  A pro-immigrant group explained that this agreement means ICE can&#8217;t take action against workers who have a false Social Security number or a borrowed employment authorization document to get a job in any workplace in which there&#8217;s an ongoing labor dispute.</p>
<p>My friends, enforcement of our laws apparently now takes a backseat to labor unions&#8217; right to organize workplaces.  This is exactly the type of outcome that we should expect when we let labor unions get deep into our federal government.</p>
<p>In 1973, there was a very famous case &#8212; it&#8217;s called US versus Enmons, a Supreme Court case that involved striking electrical workers who allegedly fired high-powered rifles at three utility company transformers.  They drained oil from the transformers, and they blew up a substation.  The Court decided that their acts were not wrongful &#8211;</p>
<p>(Laughter)</p>
<p>&#8211; and that they couldn&#8217;t be prosecuted under federal extortion laws, because they were in the furtherance of legitimate union goals.</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Speaker:</strong> Whoa.</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Speaker:</strong> Wow.</p>
<p><strong>Mallory Factor:</strong> And these goals being improving the outcome of a strike.</p>
<p>Some federal and state laws actually carve out labor union exceptions from laws regulating criminal conduct, such as stalking, trespassing.  And we go into this in the book in great detail.  Now, there was a bill put in, I think, from Georgia, Congressman Gingrey, to solve this problem.  Can&#8217;t even get it on the floor, can&#8217;t even get it on the floor, with a Republican House.  Because Republicans are afraid that the unions could hurt them.</p>
<p>Anyway, thank you, yes.  We go into great detail in it, and there&#8217;s a whole chapter on that.  And some of the stuff is just shocking.  I mean, the idea that union violence and coercion is legal, and we can&#8217;t even correct it.  Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Unidentified Audience Member:</strong> Can you tell us how many states have the right-to-work laws and how we can get more states to take the same approach?</p>
<p><strong>Mallory Factor:</strong> Twenty-three &#8212; 24 now, I guess, with the last one &#8212; states are right-to-work.  And basically, right-to-work doesn&#8217;t mean &#8212; do you all understand what right-to-work means?  Okay, let me help you out here.  First of all, right-to-work does not mean that you can stop a union from taking away your First Amendment rights.  I mean, a union collectively bargains for you, and you have no right to stop them from doing that.  This is under federal law.  What it means is you don&#8217;t have to pay a union to keep your job.  That&#8217;s all it means.</p>
<p>There are seven states, however, where if you&#8217;re a government employee you don&#8217;t have to have a union represent you.  And these states, obviously, have the lowest unionization rates in government employees.  But only seven states, not all the other right-to-work states.  And most people don&#8217;t have any idea about it.  We go into that in the book in detail, because that&#8217;s even more shocking.</p>
<p>Remember, if you have a job, and there&#8217;s a union in your workplace, even if you&#8217;re a right-to-work state, the union still represents you.  You just don&#8217;t have to pay them dues.  Obama wants to get right-to-work abolished by taking a little tiny section of the Labor Relations Act &#8212; it&#8217;s called section 14b, just a few words.  And that goes, there&#8217;s no right-to-work states any longer.</p>
<p>Anyway, I could go on for days.  If anybody wants to read &#8220;Shadow Bosses,&#8221; I&#8217;ll be happy to sign it for you.  I know a lot of you have it already.  And thank you all for being so generous and telling me that, it&#8217;s made me feel great.  And thank you, Mike.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Half-Truths, Delusions, and Immigration</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/half-truths-delusions-and-immigration/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=half-truths-delusions-and-immigration</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/half-truths-delusions-and-immigration/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Feb 2013 04:56:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[How Obama plans to catapult lawbreakers, including convicts, to the head of the line. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/half-truths-delusions-and-immigration/la-pn-obama-new-immigration-reform-20130125-001/" rel="attachment wp-att-178044"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-178044" title="la-pn-obama-new-immigration-reform-20130125-001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/la-pn-obama-new-immigration-reform-20130125-001.jpg" alt="" width="248" height="184" /></a>The White House has leaked immigration legislation it’s preparing in case Congress fails to craft its own. According to <em>USA Today</em>, 11 million illegal aliens could apply for a “Lawful Prospective Immigrant” visa and after 8 years could get a green card. Criminals would be excluded––unless they served less than a year for their crime, or were convicted of 3 different crimes resulting in 90 days in jail. That will hearten the hit-and-run drivers and welfare cheats. Once they get a visa, their families will be in line for visas too. In other words, the president’s plan amounts to an amnesty that vaults lawbreakers, including some convicts, to the head of the immigration line.</p>
<p>The Republicans are squawking, but any plan they would sign off on will end up doing the same thing. Too many have drunk the electoral kool-aid and believe that caving on illegal immigrants will get them more Latino votes. But even if the Republicans’ share of Latino voters reached the 40% George W. Bush got, the Dems would still net 1.5 million more votes if illegal aliens became citizens. That’s not much of a payoff for betraying principle. And reaching that 40% appears increasingly unlikely, given that 75% of Hispanics want bigger government and more services, according to a Pew Hispanic Center <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/v-politics-values-and-religion/">poll</a> last April, while a 2011 poll from Moore Information found that 29% think the Republican party “favors only the rich” and Republicans are “selfish and out for themselves.” They are already Democrats no matter what happens with illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>More important, the public discourse about illegal immigration is filled with incoherence, duplicity, and wishful thinking. One problem is the constant confusion of legal and illegal immigration. People justifiably worried about the latter are constantly chided for being “anti-immigrant” and forgetting that America is “a nation of immigrants.” But these are two separate complex problems, and trying to fix both with some “comprehensive reform” will end up with new policies that likely will make both worse. Today legal immigration is marred by “family reunification” preferences that count not just spouses and minor children but parents and siblings as “family.” Two-thirds of legal immigrants have come under these provisions, which take no account of whether or not these “family” members have skills beneficial to this country or are likely to become public charges.</p>
<p>The other 250,000 aspirant immigrants are limited to 55,000 visas a year, for which they compete by lottery rather than on the basis of skills or professions useful for Americans. Indeed, only 6.5% of legal immigrants are admitted based on those skills. Fixing legal immigration means doing what most other countries like Canada do: letting in those who benefit this country and its economy, and getting rid of “family reunification” programs. And don’t forget, an amnesty for the 11 million illegal aliens likely means many millions more will be admitted through family reunification programs.</p>
<p>As for illegal immigration, the public conversation is filled with half-truths and wishful thinking. Florida governor Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323482504578229660442099732.html?KEYWORDS=immigration+reform">writing</a> in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> last month, offered a typical example: “Most immigrants come here to secure a better life for themselves and their families. They cherish the values of hard work, faith, family, enterprise and patriotism that have made this country great.” Well, some do, some do not. The fact is, the federal government has shown no interest in sorting out one from the other. Nor will setting the amnesty bar at felony convictions or “serious crimes” help distinguish between those who fit Bush and Bolick’s description, and <a href="http://cis.org/node/3877#illegal">those</a> receiving EBT cards, WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) food aid, routine health care at emergency rooms, Medicaid and Medi-Cal, and those social welfare benefits, like social security disability payments, that are illegal for non-citizens but available through a forged social security card. And remember that the children of illegal aliens born in this country are eligible for means-tested welfare programs. Does anyone think that when the amnesty comes, the Feds will deem ineligible any illegal immigrant who has used these benefits?</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks the previous is a racist or xenophobic exaggeration is welcome to visit California’s San Joaquin Valley, where we have been living with the problems of illegal immigration for decades before it became a national issue. Come and see any hospital emergency room, or visit a prison, jail, or penitentiary, or sit in a schoolroom where English is a foreign language, or tour the rural Valley farm towns riddled with theft, gang violence, drugs, and broken city governments (“In essence,” Victor Davis Hanson <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/304800/flip-side-illegal-immigration-victor-davis-hanson">writes</a>, “in rural central California, the most highly regulated among the states, there are de facto no longer building codes, dog ordinances, health requirements, or any of the basic rules and regulations of a civilized or caring society”). And of course this disorder costs money. The direct costs just of schooling, healing, and incarcerating illegal immigrants in California were $4.2 billion a year in 2009. And that’s a very conservative estimate that leaves out indirect costs, which add up to billions more. The Federation for American Immigration Reform puts the 2009 tab at $22 billion.</p>
<p>Finally, the notion that, as Marco Rubio <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323442804578235844003050604.html?KEYWORDS=marco+rubio+immigration">told</a> the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>, immigrants “assimilate easily,” is another delusional notion. Notice how Rubio doesn’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, or acknowledge the vast cultural variety within both sets of immigrants, a complexity routinely ignored in the use of meaningless categories like “Hispanic” and “Latino.” The fact is, since the rise of identity politics multiculturalism in the 60s, assimilation has become a dirty word, and rather than happening “easily” does so with difficulty and with little support from federal and state government. On the contrary, from ballots printed in a dozen languages other than English, to public school curricula teaching melodramas of white wickedness and mythic histories of non-white achievement and superiority, our public culture encourages and rewards the resistance to assimilation. That millions of legal and illegal immigrants in time assimilate anyway is testimony to their personal character, not the organs of our political culture.</p>
<p>This is the huge difference between immigration today and the great age of immigration between around 1880 and 1920 that often is cited as evidence that we are a “nation of immigrants.” Back then, immigrants were welcomed on the proviso that they become Americans if they wanted to reap all the benefits and opportunities for which they had made such an arduous journey. This meant learning English, American history and government, and American political virtues and principles. And it meant showing in word and deed loyalty to their new home. If they wanted to honor their home culture, they were free to do so on their own time through civic organizations, church leagues, private language school, and celebrating national holidays. But the public political and social culture and institutions were American, and if there were any conflicts between their new home and the old, in public behavior at least they had to choose the new. And if that choice was too hard, or they preferred their old culture, then they were free to go back.</p>
<p>That paradigm that made immigration a success in America has been weakened and compromised. Now immigrants, including illegal ones, are encouraged to demand public and political validation and recognition of the country and culture that failed them. They are encouraged to demand all the rights and benefits of living in a land of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity without paying any cost in loyalty or changing their beliefs or identity. Indeed, as victims of American imperialism, racism, and oppression, they are encouraged to consider these benefits as justified payback for those historical crimes. The result is to further the balkanization of American society that has eroded our common national identity.</p>
<p>Again, not all illegal immigrants have rejected becoming American. Millions are better Americans that many native-born Americans are. But as yet we have shown no inclination for sorting out the ones who are making that transformation from the ones who want to stay Mexican or Guatemalan or Ecuadoran yet still enjoy all the opportunity, rights, and benefits denied them by their home countries. And that is the major flaw in the “comprehensive reform” legislation both parties are touting. When they legalize 11 million illegal immigrants, they will not have a clue about the character of those upon whom they will bestow the gift of citizenship in the freest, most prosperous country in the world. Instead, these politicians simply repeat feel-good half-truths and sentimental myths as they prepare an amnesty that will worsen the problem rather than solve it.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Cultural Deviancy Is the Problem, Not Guns</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/cultural-deviancy-is-the-problem-not-guns/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=cultural-deviancy-is-the-problem-not-guns</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Feb 2013 04:10:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walter Williams]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=177477</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The real driving force behind fire arms violence. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/walter-williams/cultural-deviancy-is-the-problem-not-guns/rappers-gun-violence-4/" rel="attachment wp-att-177479"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-177479" title="rappers-gun-violence-4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/rappers-gun-violence-4.jpg" alt="" width="290" height="217" /></a>There&#8217;s a story told about a Paris chief of police who was called to a department store to stop a burglary in progress. Upon his arrival, he reconnoitered the situation and ordered his men to surround the entrances of the building next door. When questioned about his actions, he replied that he didn&#8217;t have enough men to cover the department store&#8217;s many entrances but he did have enough for the building next door. Let&#8217;s see whether there are similarities between his strategy and today&#8217;s gun control strategy.</p>
<p>Last year, Chicago had 512 homicides; Detroit had 411; Philadelphia had 331; and Baltimore had 215. Those cities are joined by other dangerous cities — such as St. Louis, Memphis, Tenn., Flint, Mich., and Camden, N.J. — and they also lead the nation in shootings, assaults, rapes and robberies. Both the populations of those cities and their crime victims are predominantly black. Each year, more than 7,000 blacks are murdered. Close to 100 percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.</p>
<p>According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation&#8217;s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it&#8217;s 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation&#8217;s homicide victims, blacks are also most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery. The magnitude of this tragedy can be seen in another light. According to a Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites.</p>
<p>What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons? You&#8217;d be hard put to come up with an amount greater than 1 or 2 percent. In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club. But people who want to weaken our Second Amendment guarantees employ a strategy like that of the Paris chief of police.</p>
<p>They can&#8217;t do much about hammers, clubs, fists or pistols, but by exploiting public ignorance, they might have a bit of success getting an &#8220;assault weapon&#8221; ban that will have little impact on violent crime.</p>
<p>There are other measures these people employ in an attempt to end violence that border on lunacy. Massachusetts&#8217; Hyannis West Elementary recently warned a 5-year-old&#8217;s parents that if their son made another gun from a Legos set, he&#8217;d be suspended. Elementary-school children have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for drawing a picture of a gun or pointing a finger and saying, &#8220;Bang, bang.&#8221; I shudder to think about what would happen to kids in a schoolyard if they played, as I played nearly 70 years ago, &#8220;cops &#8216;n&#8217; robbers&#8221; or &#8220;cowboys &#8216;n&#8217; Indians.&#8221; Maybe today&#8217;s politically correct educators would cut the kids a bit of slack if they said they were playing &#8220;cowboys &#8216;n&#8217; Native Americans.&#8221;</p>
<p>What explains a lot of what we see today, which politicians and their liberal allies would never condemn, is growing cultural deviancy. Twenty-nine percent of white children, 53 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of black children are born to unmarried women. The absence of a husband and father from the home is a strong contributing factor to poverty, school failure, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance and a host of other social problems. By the way, the low marriage rate among blacks is relatively new. Census data show that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults from 1890 to 1940. In 2009, the poverty rate among married whites was 3.2 percent; for blacks, it was 7 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 13.2 percent. The higher poverty rates — 22 percent for whites, 35.6 percent for blacks and 37.9 percent for Hispanics — are among unmarried families.</p>
<p>Other forms of cultural deviancy are found in the kind of music accepted today that advocates killing and rape and other vile acts. Punishment for criminal behavior is lax. Today&#8217;s Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Exposing the 18th Street Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/exposing-the-18th-street-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=exposing-the-18th-street-gang</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/exposing-the-18th-street-gang/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 01 Nov 2012 04:05:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[18th Street Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[California]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Los Angeles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shaw]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=163507</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[And how the Bush administration's Secure Communities program has helped turn the tide. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/exposing-the-18th-street-gang/18-graf/" rel="attachment wp-att-163536"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163536" title="18-graf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/18-graf.gif" alt="" width="315" height="232" /></a>On March 2, 2008, Jamiel Shaw joined the likes of Len Bias and Ben Wilson in an exclusive group no one ever wants to be a part of. All three are one-of-a-kind talented athletes who died under tragic and disturbing circumstances. Each of their deaths was blamed in large part on real and perceived failed social policies. Because of the overwhelming media attention that each of the three stories generated, the shock from the deaths led directly to social change.</p>
<p>The cases of both Len Bias and Ben Wilson have become so famous that ESPN featured each in their 30 For 30 Series.</p>
<div id="attachment_163532" style="width: 194px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/exposing-the-18th-street-gang/photo-1-6/" rel="attachment wp-att-163532"><img class="size-full wp-image-163532" title="photo 1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/photo-1.jpg" alt="" width="184" height="274" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Len Bias dunking during his college basketball career</p></div>
<p>Athletic University of Maryland forward Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose two days after the Boston Celtics took him with the second pick in the 1986 National Basketball Association (NBA) Draft. Many of the tough drug laws in place today (which often led to overcrowding in prisons) could be traced to the aftermath of Bias’ death.</p>
<p>In Chicago, Ben Wilson died on November 21, 1984 after he was shot by another youth following a confrontation. Wilson starred at Simeon Career Academy while in high school. (Leading Simeon to a state title earlier in 1984) Simeon also produced Derrick Rose. He was considered the best high school basketball player in America in his class. Some that saw him play believe he had the potential to be the greatest basketball player ever to come out of the Chicago area, an area that includes NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas. While Chicago’s tough gun laws pre-date Wilson’s shooting, those views were crystallized and set in stone for a long time in Chicago following Wilson’s death.</p>
<div id="attachment_163533" style="width: 190px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/exposing-the-18th-street-gang/photo-2-3/" rel="attachment wp-att-163533"><img class="size-full wp-image-163533" title="photo 2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/photo-2.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="258" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Ben Wilson in 1984</p></div>
<p>Jamiel Shaw burst on the football scene as a junior in high school in 2007. He had rare speed; the kind necessary to be a football playmaker. Shaw was always on the field in a position to make a big play. He was the star running back on offense and the shut-down cornerback on defense.  On special teams, he returned punts and kick-offs. At the time of his death, Shaw was still looking forward to his senior year in high-school, which almost everyone believed would be even better than his junior year.</p>
<p>Shaw’s dad, Jamiel Shaw Sr. said the world lost a one of a kind talent.</p>
<p>“(It was the) equivalent to Michael Jordan dying,” said Shaw Sr. He continued, “He was super-fast; he had a chance at the Olympics.”</p>
<p>On March 2, 2008, he was walking home in the Arlington Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. In gang parlance, Arlington Heights was known for a large contingency of Bloods, an African-American gang.</p>
<p>The perpetrator of the murder is an individual named Pedro Espinoza. At the time, Espinoza was a member of the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang in Los Angeles, rivals of the Bloods. Espinoza was in the neighborhood visiting Shaw’s neighbor, when he approached Shaw on his way home. Shaw was wearing a Spiderman backpack, which happened to sport the colors of The Bloods. After confronting Shaw, Espinoza shot Shaw execution style.</p>
<p>Immediately following the murder, the media blamed flawed immigration policy and specifically the “sanctuary city” policy of the city of Los Angeles. While flawed immigration policies contributed to this murder, laying proper blame becomes far more complicated.</p>
<p>Originally, Espinoza was what we now call a DREAMer. According to Alex Alonso, a gang expert in Los Angeles, Espinoza crossed the border illegally with his mother when he was between the ages of two and six.</p>
<p>In the initial aftermath of Shaw’s murder, lax immigration policies on the part of officials of the city of Los Angeles were initially blamed. LA presented an easy target. After all, LA was well known for implementing a so-called “sanctuary city” policy.</p>
<p>In fact, said Jessica Vaughan in an interview with Front Page Magazine, the city of LA has plenty of responsibility. Vaughan is a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies. She did extensive research on immigration policy’s role in certain gang activity in her role as policy analyst.</p>
<p>Vaughan said that Espinoza was in parts of the LA governmental system for years and no one alerted ICE. Vaughan said she was even able to speak with Espinoza’s juvenile probation officer. Vaughan said that Espinoza slipped through the cracks for years in LA.</p>
<p>Alonso said the truth is far more complicated. For instance, there’s the matter of whose fault it was that Espinoza was released following a gun charge. He was released the day before he committed the murder.</p>
<p>In late 2007, Espinoza was arrested on a gun charge and spent several months in prison before being released in March 2008.</p>
<p>Alonso points out that he was arrested on these charges in Culver City, California, not LA. Furthermore, he was taken to LA County Jail, a totally separate governmental agency from the city of Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, ICE should have had longstanding policies where ICE agents had an office on-site in LA County Jail. It would ultimately be their responsibility to investigate Espinoza. Yet, the entirety of the blame fell on the city of Los Angeles, even though that is the one entity not responsible in anyway for Espinoza’s arrest, incarceration, and release immediately prior to his killing of Shaw.</p>
<p>ICE declined to give any new comment on the matter, when contacted by Front Page Magazine. Instead, we were directed to a statement ICE gave to CNN in the immediate aftermath of the murder.</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not going to provide an on camera interview regarding this case because the issues related to this subject’s prior assault arrest involve law enforcement agencies other than ICE.  As you know, the Culver City Police Department originally detained Mr. Espinoza for assault and took the booking information related to the case.  Based upon that information, Mr. Espinoza was not referred to ICE for a follow-up immigration enforcement interview after he was detained at the Los Angeles County Jail on the assault charges.</p>
<p>Following Mr. Espinoza’s latest arrest, ICE officers at LA County Jail sought him out and conducted an interview.  During that interview, Mr. Espinoza was untruthful and uncooperative.  The following day, the officers located one of the suspect’s relatives who stated that Mr. Espinoza was born in Mexico and he will come into ICE custody if, and when, he is released by local authorities.</p></blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, said Alonzo, based on his own research, illegal immigration has far less to do with gang activity than in many other cities. He said that he’s testified in about 300 gang cases and only 15 of those involved illegal immigration.</p>
<p>Alonso said that in his own research of LA gangs, he found that poverty rates were far better predictors of gang activity than were illegal immigration statistics. Alonzo said that neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40% and above were almost always ones infected with gangs.</p>
<p>However, the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang itself has had longstanding ties to the illegal immigrant community, using that community as a sort of niche for recruiting new members. That’s where it gets even more complicated, said Alonso.</p>
<p>The 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang in Los Angeles has little in common with the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gangs in cities like Houston and Chicago. That’s because 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gangs is a sort of gang movement and philosophy. All 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang members subscribe to the same philosophy, but there’s no central hierarchy controlling any of the local gang members.</p>
<p>In fact, Espinoza belonged to something called the Alsace Street Clique. That was his gang. It is one of hundreds, said Alonso, that each subscribe to the same philosophy. They are not necessarily interconnected in other ways. For instance, members of other gangs aren’t necessarily helping to plan crimes with members of this gang.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.streetgangs.com/hispanic/18thstreet">As of 2008</a>, there were about 15,000 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang members in the city of Los Angeles.  That makes them the largest Hispanic gang in the city. Writing about Shaw’s murder in 2008, Alonso also <a href="http://www.streetgangs.com/features/jamiel-shaw-gang-race">said that statistic was misleading</a>.</p>
<p>“Collectively they are the largest Hispanic gang operating under the same name, but in actuality, each of the 20 or so discreet 18th Street neighborhoods should be treated as individual autonomous gangs, since many of the separate neighborhoods clash and have internal rivalries in an unstable network.”</p>
<p>Nationally, the gang counts about 60,000 members, in thirty-seven states, and in 120 cities. It is estimated that as many as sixty percent are in the United States illegally, though Alonso puts the number between five and ten percent in the city of Los Angeles, where the gang originated in the late 1950s.</p>
<p>There are gang members that believe in the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang philosophy at every level of the international drug trade, from helping the drug lords in South America start the smuggling route, to those that help drug mules smuggle drugs illegally over the Mexican border, to those that sell it on the streets.</p>
<p>The street pushers are not in contact with those that are helping to smuggle the drugs across the border.</p>
<p>Alonso said he didn’t discount the presence of illegal immigration in 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang nationwide, though ironically, he said that it was a relatively small problem in LA.</p>
<p>Whatever the truth, the response in LA was fierce and put the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang in the crosshairs of authorities.</p>
<p>According to numbers from the ICE field office in LA, acquired exclusively by Front Page Magazine, gang arrests by the Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Office went up dramatically from 2007-2009. The spike started shortly after Shaw’s death. It’s important to note that when ICE participates in a gang investigation, those investigated are pro-active, targeted street arrests based on intelligence and operations, not people located in jails who were arrested for other things.</p>
<p>The arrests by ICE LA from 2007-2009 were 129, 451, and 502 of all gang members, and 11, 21, and 39 for members of the 18<sup>th</sup> Street Gang specifically.</p>
<p>Furthermore, points out Jamiel Shaw Sr., father of the victim, California was leading the way in implementing Secure Communities. Secure Communities is a data sharing program that would give ICE fingertip access to all sorts of inmate data from any inmate in any municipal prison in the network.</p>
<p>California was one of the first states to have each of the counties signed up, and leads all the States in the country in yearly deportations from investigations started by Secure Communities. Secure Communities was started under the Bush administration but popularized under the Obama administration. Currently more than 80% of all counties have signed up for Secure Communities.</p>
<p>In fact, Secure Communities became so popular that liberal groups attempted to ban most contact between ICE and local county jails in the state. A bill even passed the California legislature significantly curbing cooperation between jails in the State of California and ICE detainers. (ICE detainers are holds on municipal prisoners by ICE and they are often the result of Secure Communities investigations.) Governor Brown wound up vetoing that bill, a position that Jamiel Shaw Sr. vocally supported.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Hispanics That Democrats Love to Hate</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/humberto-fontova/the-hispanics-democrats-love-to-hate/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-hispanics-democrats-love-to-hate</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/humberto-fontova/the-hispanics-democrats-love-to-hate/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:08:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assimilation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cubans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democratic Convention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mexican]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Republican Convention]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=143292</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Reflections on the Democratic and Republican conventions. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cubans2.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-143395" title="cubans2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/cubans2.gif" alt="" width="375" height="254" /></a>“<em>My</em> Hispanic can beat up <em>your</em> Hispanic!” pretty much captured the convention kick-offs.</p>
<p>“Republicans chose Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Cuban-American, to introduce Mitt Romney,&#8221; reported the AP. “Democrats picked Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, a Mexican American, as keynote speaker. Both are considered rising stars.”</p>
<p>Ah! But what fun the Republicans missed. Given the era’s political correctness, politics in the U.S. get pretty boring nowadays. No present-day politician or their slick consultants could possibly publicize what’s forthcoming in this article. So please stick around, because I belong to neither profession.</p>
<p>Most immigrants arrive in America poor (especially by U.S. standards). Some arrive destitute. Almost all Cubans arrived destitute. The Castroites stole everything they owned. Yet in his classic work, <em>The</em> <em>Spirit of Enterprise</em> George Gilder titled a chapter, &#8220;The Cuban Miracle.”<em> “</em>No other immigrant group so quickly and successfully transformed a city, while achieving such multifarious business breakthroughs as the fugitives from Castro&#8217;s regime who made Miami their home after 1960.”</p>
<p>More infuriating still (for the Democrat-Media Complex) the 2000 census showed that second-generation Cuban-Americans have educational and income levels higher &#8212; not only than most ethnic groups who dutifully punch the clock at the Democratic plantation &#8212; but also higher than <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/fidel.html">the U.S. population in general.</a></p>
<p>But according to the Center for Immigration Studies 75 percent of Mexican immigrant households receive government checks of one form or another. This percentage perfectly matches their Democratic affiliation.</p>
<p>In fact, the most <a href="http://newsroom.ucr.edu/1922">lopsidedly loyal Republicans</a> in the modern history of our Republic are a genuinely (meaning descended from inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula) Hispanic group. You read right: Back in 2006 Senator Tom Tancredo complained that Cuban Americans “refused to assimilate.” He took a lot of heat for the quip &#8212; but in fact he’s correct.  To wit:</p>
<p>While a healthy majority (56 percent) of their countrymen voted for Obama in 2008, a miniscule portion (33 percent) of Cuban Americans did so. While a majority of their countrymen register with the Democratic Party, a minuscule (20 percent) of Cuban-Americans do so. Cuban American votes for Obama represented the tiniest percentage of Obama voters of any ethnic group and Cuban American party affiliation marks the smallest Democratic registration of any ethnic group in the U.S. These percentages clearly show Cuban American disdain for the political folkways of their adopted country.</p>
<p>A 2009 Gallup poll found that only 34 percent of Americans found the ideology of the Republican Party <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/121307/more-americans-see-democratic-party-too-liberal.aspx">“about right.” </a>But over double that percentage of Cuban Americans find it “right.” These exotic Cuban Americans are clearly thumbing their nose at the political norms of the nation that so graciously accepted them!</p>
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		<title>The Immigration Ploy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/thomas-sowell/the-immigration-ploy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-immigration-ploy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/thomas-sowell/the-immigration-ploy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 20 Jun 2012 04:03:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Sowell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hispanic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=135385</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Obama's quasi-amnesty trick is not meant to help the country but help himself. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/97216a.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-135390" title="97216a" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/97216a.gif" alt="" width="375" height="241" /></a>President Obama&#8217;s latest political ploy — granting new &#8220;rights&#8221; out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country&#8217;s long-run problems.</p>
<p>Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration policy, his Executive Order is good only as long as he remains president, which may be only a matter of months after this year&#8217;s election.</p>
<p>People cannot plan their lives on the basis of laws that can suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear, in less than a year. To come forward today and claim the protection of the Obama Executive Order is to declare publicly and officially that your parents entered the country illegally. How that may be viewed by some later administration is anybody&#8217;s guess.</p>
<p>Employers likewise cannot rely on policies that may be here today and gone tomorrow, whether these are temporary tax rates designed to look good at election time or temporary immigration policies that can backfire later if employers get accused of hiring illegal immigrants.</p>
<p>Why hire someone, and invest time and money in training them, if you may be forced to fire them before a year has passed?</p>
<p>Kicking the can down the road is one of the favorite exercises in Washington. But neither in the economy nor in their personal lives can people make plans and commitments on the basis of government policies that suddenly appear and suddenly disappear.</p>
<p>Like so many other Obama ploys, his immigration ploy is not meant to help the country, but to help Obama. This is all about getting the Hispanic vote this November.</p>
<p>The principle involved — keeping children from being hurt by actions over which they had no control — is one already advanced by Senator Marco Rubio, who may well end up as Governor Romney&#8217;s vice-presidential running mate. The Obama Executive Order, which suddenly popped up like a rabbit out of a magician&#8217;s hat, steals some of Senator Rubio&#8217;s thunder, so it is clever politics.</p>
<p>But clever politics is what has gotten this country into so much trouble, not only as regards immigration but also as regards the economy and the dangerous international situation.</p>
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