OK, I get it that there should be standards for federally subsidized housing. But "security?" In what sense? Today’s story seems to suggest that those looking to the federal government to require beefed-up security are thinking in terms of — I’m not sure, but it looks like this — landlords having to hire rent-a-cops, or turning subsidized housing developments into gated communities:
Columbia City Council members on Thursday will lobby the state’s
Congressional delegation to attach security requirements to laws
governing apartment complexes that accept federal housing vouchers…
I’ve got another idea. How about if city council members "lobby" their own city administration to enforce the law within the city limits? How about that? Note in this other story today that a lot of folks in that part of town feel like it’s not doing that. Doesn’t the city manager’s responsibility in this matter extend beyond declaring a portion of the city "a community in crisis?"
You would think so. An interesting topic to have in mind as we begin interviews with city council candidates today.
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But Brad, we know the federal government is better equiped to pay for it, all they have to do is turn on the printing presses and print some more money……right?
And am I the only one who sees the irony in the fact that we can fence in/out? the tennants of the projects, but we,re not allowed to fence out illegal immigrants?
Nanny government at it’s finest!
Brad, these large complexes are funded by federal tax credits and Section 8 vouchers through a national HUD contract. They are in essence a privately owned, but in large part publically funded, public housing projects. The history of these large complexes is that without on site security, cameras and fencing and a management that monitors and enforces lease provisions about criminal and violent behavior they can quickly become centers for criminal activity. In most cases the tenants themselves are the victims of these crimes. The federal government has minimum code standards for the physical structure of these apartments. I believe that the federal government should also require a security plan. If you go to the city website http://www.columbiasc.net and click on the Gang Assessment in the left hand column, you will see a number of graphs that locate youth violence and crime in the city and county. Much of this crime occurs in these apartment complexes such as Gable Oaks and the Colony Apartments. Just as these residents deserve to live in a well maintained apartment, they also deserve to live in a safe apartment. The City, including me, City Council, the City Manager and the police should be held accountable for safety in the City, but I think the federal government has a role to play in their federally funded apartments that account for a great deal of the crime in our City.
More Liberal socialist Obamanist garbage, the Federal Government is not responsible for everything wrong with insolent, indolent, hate-filled, anti-capitalist bums. I was raised in the New Orleans area and heard this crap my whole life. I love this town and tired of hearing how the Bush administration created all of the poverty and crime in Columbia which had nothing but prosperity under President Clinton. When Barack Obama, the anti-Christian’s and anti-patriot’s answer to the free market society gets elected then please shut up!
If you give someone $750 a month for an apartment because they are poor, what is the incentive to get out of poverty?
And as long as we have tax dollars to pay for security for a Confederate submarine, I don’t want to hear about going to the Federal government for more money. The money is already available to do all the things the government should do… too bad it’s wasted on politician’s pet projects.
Easy fix. Cut funding for useless stuff like arts festivals, marketing studies, online courses for police officers, etc.
and you’ll have plenty of money to spend on protecting people from being killed. It’s all about priorities. Black people killing black people apparently hasn’t reached the same level of interest as a concert in Finley Park. Someday…
It was only a few years ago that Bob Coble and Charles Austin were saying, on the radio, that Columbia had no gang problem. We in the communities argued they were wrong…and now the truth is known.
Black Ausin and White Coble have teamed up to make an excellent elctorial team (Austin gets the votes, Coble gets the cash)…and the rest of us be damned.
I got smart, and moved, leaving the high taxes and crime behind me. Smartest thing I ever did.
Heh. I was right when I wrote this morning that politicians are ready to act. Point those fingers!
Mayor Bob’s logic is impeccable: were it not for the federal handouts, we wouldn’t have these apartment complexes and would not need increased security staff (i.e., law enforcement).
So this too is Bush’s fault!
We can carry Mayor Bob’s train of thought through to his caboose: while the poor will always be with us, they are the federal government’s concern, not the city’s. The message to me is that I don’t have to be concerned either because my federal taxes absolve me of any responsibility to care.
Bizarre? Yup, but totally in character.
Take the mayor’s and city council’s response as captured by those two articles, throw in Tom Teepen’s idiotic column today, and you’ve got a great picture of the failure of common sense and the disappearance of personal responsibility that’s so prevalent today. It ain’t that hard.
A police chief with some savvy and that city hall crew ought to figure out a way to really help those folks who are asking those whom they elected to do their jobs. If a police substation is too expensive, how about increased police patrols and helping the residents set up a neighborhood watch? You have a community calling for policing, so how about some community policing?
Put me down for $50 as a contribution for some radios for the residents of Gable Oak. Since all he seems to have on his mind is the feds, tell Mayor Bob to put on an apron and hold a bake sale to raise funds for more radios. Sheesh!
Doug Ross quote –
“Cut funding for useless stuff like arts festivals, marketing studies, online courses for police officers, etc. and you’ll have plenty of money to spend on protecting people from being killed.”
Arts festivals enhance the quality of life for the citizens of a community – and quality of life issues are what separate a vibrant city from a dead city.
Marketing studies. I assume you are referring to the city’s efforts to market itself to the world -something else that is necessary to maintain a vibrant, growing city.
Online courses for Police Officers – Do you not want the person directly responsible for you and your family’s personal safety to be more educated? A police officer on the street is expected to know the law (much like an attorney), is required to routinely subject himself to personal endangerment, and has to do it all without offending anyone or violating their rights. They need all the training we can give them.
The root causes of the recent shootings cannot be eliminated by simply throwing money at it. It can only be masked or “driven out” by private security on site – the perpetrators will just go to another area of the city or county to do their killing. THE ONLY WAY TO CHANGE THIS SITUATION IS FOR THE ROLE MODELS AND SOCIAL LEADERS TO PROMOTE A SENSE OF PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. Unfortunately, only so much can be accomplished on a local level, but at least an attempt should be made. When The Rev. Jesse Jackson begins preaching about things a young black kid can do to better himself and not blame every ill on society, and when the rappers ALL stop talking and behaving like murdering street thugs, only then will the problem get better.
Arts are a matter of taste, like candy and deserts. Every dollar the government spends to subsidize some minority taste in the arts, is a dollar some individual doesn’t have to spend on his artistic tastes – CDs, concerts, movies.
The arrogance of modern liberalism is its assumption that taxpayers would have mispent their money on lowbrow art, so better to have the liberals take it from them.
Columbia has spent almost $1,000,000 on marketing studies in my lifetime. Why? Because marketing companies also run political campaigns, and marketeers are close to those in power. The wishfull thinking is that everything is perception, and the problems of Columbia can be glossed over, bottled up, and offset by clever marketing. So far it has not paid for itself.
Tom Teepan can’t be real. He has to be a fictional character, lampooning dumb liberals.
He says we only increased spending on education 21% and prisons 127%, as if there is some sort of connection, in his feeble mind.
Federal spending on education is up 361% so far under President Bush. 800,000 prison inmates are illegal aliens, mostly from Mexico. How is our school system to blame for these carjackers, armed robbers, and murderers coming to America?
I am sure Charles Austin and Bob Coble could come up with some answer, after they did a mind meld.
Lee –
Yo! If parts of the city are widely known as not being safe, that puts the kibosh on even the best laid marketing plan.
WC Salley –
Why is private security on site the only answer? If you want to increase a sense of political and personal responsibility, why not get the council to hire more cops and get the community to do its part with neighborhood watch? It takes some organizing skill, but you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a community organizer around these parts, so all you need are signs, radios, training, and motivation.
In fact, you could reach out to a part of the community that’s usually overlooked and often accused of being responsible for many of our ills: middle-aged white guys. I don’t know why — maybe their receding hairlines and advancing waistlines make them do it –but these guys turn to power tools, firearms, and flashlights (PTF&F) for entertainment. Some communities might invite some of them over, the ones with the F&F part, for an evening or two to see what they might learn about Ruger, Taurus, Smith & Wesson, and Maglite. They’d learn why Colt is called the original point and click device.
To Craig: whatever drug dealers may be, they are certainly not “anti-capitalist.” They are, in fact, capitalists.
To Mike: Tom Teepen’s column was idiotic? So tell us your explanation of why America leads the world in jailing its citizens? I guess we really do have the most bad people in this country. Yippee.
To Craig again: just what is anti-Christian about Barack Obama?
To Doug: the $750 doesn’t go to the families, but to the landlords under Section 8. And what is the incentive to get out of poverty? I dunno, I guess if we “received” $750 vouchers to live there, Doug, you and I would surely want to live in Gable Oaks forever, right? No incentive to leave that place, correct?
Gee, I’m surprised nobody’s come on the post to recommend that the city provide firearms for all the residents of Gable Oaks. No gun-free zones in America!
Geez. I have a novel idea, except that I’m just rephrasing what Brad wrote, something that got lip service from Mayor Bob.
The city should police the city.
I repeat, the city should police the city.
I live an hour away, and I’m already paying for the Section 8 housing for people I’ve never met, so let that be my contribution.
But let the city of Columbia keep them reasonably safe, because that’s the city of Columbia’s job, not Washington’s, not New York’s, not Montana’s, not Hawaii’s.
Phillip,
Do the residents of Gable Oaks pay on top of the $750? If not, then they are getting free housing. And what incentive (aside from the criminal element who frequent the free housing) is there to leave?
Wouldn’t it be better to use $750 as a 2-1 dollar match on buying a home? A $1000 mortgage would buy a $100K home. We need to develop the incentive to break the cycle of poverty, not feed it by giving money to apartment owners. Encourage home ownership.
Encourage responsible behavior.
$750 is a lot in my opinion for what they are getting. I rented a three bedroom apartment near Polo Road in northeast Columbia five years ago for about $1000 a month.
Phillip, as a matter of fact, the Clinton administration tried to set up all kinds of gun control for the residents of government housing, but the federal courts struck it down. They don’t lose their right to self defense just by moving into a government project ( or Washington, DC).
The basic problem is that government builds these Instant Slums. Instead of wising up working poor people to break the cycle of poverty, as Doug says, the bureaucrats are more interested in maintaining a population of “clients” to justify their careers as social workers and whatever.
Doug, my understanding of the Section 8 program is that the families still pay rent up to a specified limit based on their income, and that the Section 8 program then pays the difference up to fair market rent to the landlord. Brad would know this better than I and can correct me if I’m wrong. But I don’t think this is “free housing.”
But regarding Mayor Coble’s response here, my question is this: there are federally-subsidized Section 8 complexes all over the nation. Crime has indeed been an issue in many of these places…surely then this issue of a city attempting to get HUD to include security as part of minimum livability requirements has to have arisen somewhere else before. Or has it? Is Columbia the first city to try this?
You wouldn’t have one-tenth of the crime that we do in this country if we adopted a program of drug decriminalization. With no incentive to make a profit from the black market economy, you wouldn’t have dumb guys shooting each other over territory (or sneakers or whatever). Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal one.
Of course there is ample evidence that our own federal government has facilitated the transfer of drugs into this country, and more specifically, into poor urban neighborhoods. Air America, Iran-Contra, and farther back. Where the hell did all that heroin come from back in the 50’s? The tooth fairy? It was (and is) not a war on drugs, but on minorities and other prone-to-disenfranchisment demographics.
And as for cannabis (ie marijuana, a made-up word), you’re telling me that it’s okay for people to smoke tobacco and drink alcohol–even pure grain alcohol–but not consume a plant that the God in which some of you seem to believe put into the very earth beneath your feet (and has resulted in exactly zero proven deaths)? It’s a plant you can use to make everything from fibers to biofuels to a mild intoxicants that don’t do near the psycological and physical damage that cigarettes and booze do.
You people arguing about the wrong stuff in this thread. Root causes, root causes. Say it like a mantra.
Cue some dimwit to assert that drugs are a problem of loose morals. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
You wouldn’t have one-tenth of the crime that we do in this country if we adopted a program of drug decriminalization. With no incentive to make a profit from the black market economy, you wouldn’t have dumb guys shooting each other over territory (or sneakers or whatever). Drugs are a health problem, not a criminal one.
Of course there is ample evidence that our own federal government has facilitated the transfer of drugs into this country, and more specifically, into poor urban neighborhoods. Air America, Iran-Contra, and farther back. Where the hell did all that heroin come from back in the 50’s? The tooth fairy? It was (and is) not a war on drugs, but on minorities and other prone-to-disenfranchisment demographics.
And as for cannabis (ie marijuana, a made-up word), you’re telling me that it’s okay for people to smoke tobacco and drink alcohol–even pure grain alcohol–but not consume a plant that the God in which some of you seem to believe put into the very earth beneath your feet (and has resulted in exactly zero proven deaths)? It’s a plant you can use to make everything from fibers to biofuels to a mild intoxicants that don’t do near the psycological and physical damage that cigarettes and booze do.
You people are arguing about the wrong stuff in this thread. Root causes, root causes. Say it like a mantra.
Cue some dimwit to assert that drugs are a problem of loose morals. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Thanks for weighing in Mayor Bob. You’re a brave man.
And Craig, the mayor is not an… what did you call it… "Obamanist." He was for Edwards, but I don’t hold that against him.
I’m the one who likes Obama. And McCain.
Not sure why that post went through twice. Sorry for the eyestrain.
It’s the responsibility of the community to police itself. Why can’t Columbia put one of its sub-stations in there at least until it calms down. Have the people there set up a crime watch system? Do they even know about one? It’s not up to the US gov. to police these areas. It’s up to us. This is supposed to be ‘affordable housing’. But when ‘affordable housing’ may cost your life or your child’s, I have to question how affordable it is. These unethical entrepreneurs (i.e. drug dealers and such) are being allowed to get away with murder, literally. It will take the community there and the larger community of Columbia to put a stop to it. If either one fails to do its part the community will remain lawless and dangerous.
With the right to shoot rifles in populated areas and near interstates, no wonder we have low crime. So what if a school bus is hit. So what if the murder rate in the US is in the stratosphere – mere collateral damage.
God bless the excesses of the 2nd amendment. May every home have a 50 caliber rifle!
Randy E — I suggest that you calibrate your opinions with data. The US murder rate ain’t great, but it could be worse.
Whatever right you may believe folks have to shoot wherever, remember that they are obligated to do no harm to innocents. In my book that’s part of the ethic of reciprocity, a/k/a The Golden Rule.
Besides, I’d love to fire off a few rounds from a .50 caliber with a great scope at a target over 1,000 meters downrange. I would of course do so only under safe conditions and while wearing a condom or two.
But what does that have to do with folks living in a subdivision or apartment complex who are plagued by gang-bangers? Don’t they have the right to, at a minimum, defend themselves and demand that the politicians they vote for provide more than lip service to provide security? We’re not talking mortars and hand grenades, but police patrols and assistance in organizing the community to deal with vermin.
Conservatives have this odd notion that the purpose of government is to promote the general welfare by protecting our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These folks have the same rights and it’s irresponsible of the city’s leaders to make it a federal matter.
Mike, thanks for the web-site. Although the U.S. is not as high in the violent crime rate categories as I thought we’d be we still rank ahead of the other developed nations of the world in murders per capita. We can’t hold a candle to Columbia or Russia when it comes to killing each other but we still manage to kill each other at quite a torid pace.
Burglaries have risen dramatically in the UK and Europe as the population has been disarmed. During the mid 1990s, London had 7 times the strong-armed robbery rate of New York City. With most urban dwellers disarmed, the major cities in England have a lot of “hot burglaries”, what we call “home invasion” robberies.
Crime in the US is relatively high because we have a rather large population of immigrants and latter-generations of immigrant stock from rather immoral and socially primitive societies. These people are no longer assimilated into Western norms of civilized behavior.
So what do y’all think — should this blog hire Lee as a consultant to conduct “sensitivity” training for commenters who step outside the civility bounds?
Or not?
Is posting facts now considered to be uncivil towards those who were formerly unaware of some aspect of reality?
Brad, I suggest that the State editorial board hire him as a consultant, since by his own admission, he is “always right.” You can’t do better than perfection, you know.
Herb, wait a minute! Perfect World is mine!
Sheesh, talk about a blow to one’s self-esteem…
I know it doesn’t bother you, Lee, but I find it very amusing that most of the people who complain about you never seem to be able to refute any of the facts you offer. At least Bud makes an honest effort.
It’s just mean old Lee – who doesn’t dream of a government run world filled with rainbows and lollipops. Why can’t you just let them have their fantasy? Why do you have to let facts, statistics, and actual life experiences get in the way of the dream?
I mean when the Office of Management & Budget announces that Medicare is losing $10 billion dollars a year in fraud alone, don’t you understand the proper response is “At least it’s not $11 billion!”
Doug raises a good point. I regard Lee as a bit, er, enthusiastic, but at least he steps up to the plate and takes a big swing.
The first paragraph of his post of Mar 5, 2008 3:53:15 PM is accurate: burglaries have gone through the roof in developed nations where the populace has been disarmed. (I in fact chose to highlight burglary for that very reason.) Look at Australia and the UK. In the latter, one may not even possess Mace or pepperspray; self-defense, sorry, self-defence is a no-no.
I do differ with his second paragraph. While the immigration / assimilation issue is a big crime factor in ze olt country, it’s less of a factor here. It’s present and prevalent with the activity of Hispanic and Asian gangs, but a lot of US crime is centered in poor urban areas. Or is it that we Americans are just a collection of wild and crazy groups who tend to kill folks from other groups that we don’t like? Why doesn’t The State report more on the raiding parties from Forest Acres that go a whomping in Cayce and Lexington every Saturday night?
One of the original ideas that led to Section 8 housing was to give the poor a chance at a better lifestyle away from “the projects,” to disperse them throughout a community. However communities seem to have either zoned lower-cost multifamily dwellings into new ghettos or developers / landlords found that to be a cheap way to build affordable apartments. Which prompts me to ask if The State has done an article on who the landlords are and what, if any, political connections they might have.
I thank Doug for his reassuring numbers on Medicare. I’ll sleep better knowing that it’s not $12B.
“Crime in the US is relatively high because we have a rather large population of immigrants and latter-generations of immigrant stock from rather immoral and socially primitive societies. These people are no longer assimilated into Western norms of civilized behavior.”
Lee … Where are your facts in support of such a bigoted assertion? Refute this.
Published on Tuesday, February 26, 2008 by Reuters
Study Finds Immigrants Commit Less Crime
SAN FRANCISCO – Immigrants are far less likely than the average U.S.-born citizen to commit crime in California, the most populous state in the United States, according to a report issued late on Monday.
People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California’s adult population but account for about 17 percent of the adult prison population, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California showed.
According to the report’s authors the findings suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/26/7295/
Doug, Weldon VII, Lee, and the rest:
Don’t tell Brad or the other communitarians, but there’s a new resource out there that might help those of us who seem to be fighting a losing battle against the nanny state. Picador Project. Here’s the resource page.
Don’t know if it will turn out to be anything, but I’m gonna keep an eye on it.
Mike … I know a guy who knows a guy. … No seriously, I know a guy who manages Section 8 housing in a rural SC county. It’s worth looking into landlords he works for and their connections to state legislators. Also, my guy says their management problem is not so much crime but ignorance of tenants who rent the apartments. His favorite cocktail party story is about a multi-family building that burned to the ground after one family left a whole hog to barbecue overnight in the porcelain bathtub of their unit.
Mr. Hirsch,
You act surprised that people from the least civilized areas of the world would commit crime at higher rates than the most civilized people.
Have you noticed that the vast majority of felons are not immigrants from Northern Europe, although Americans of that lineage comprise over 50% of the population.
If the immigrants from any area of the world truly become assimilated and accept the higher morals of Western Civilization, they commit less crime. That is the very definition of being civilized.
Beyond true immigrants, we have the hordes of illegal aliens, who have a criminal mentality just to sneak across the border. According to the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) is administered by the federal government to reimburse states and local jurisdictions for costs incurred for the incarceration of criminal aliens, 1 of ever 22 incacerated felons is deportable alien.
The rest of my observations are backed up by the FBI Uniform Crime reports, and the DOJ and Bureau of Prisons demographics of violent felons.
If our immigration policy is not going select the best applicants, and is not going to require acceptance of higher moral norms, we might as well not try to keep anyone out. Oooops! That’s the current policy of both major parties.
Lee … this is getting fun. My only observation was that the distinguished Lee Muller, master of facts extraordinaire, which I’ve come to respect and enjoy, should offer us a homespun bit of redneck philosophy dating back to enlightened age of Ellis Island immigration policy. In truth, I have become so accustomed to your most reliable facts that I was, quite literally, gagging on your previous assertion regarding the immigrant threat to public safety, largely because I also happened to be chewing a Milk Dud.
As for who should be allowed in, that’s another question altogether, once we have established crime rates are not a product of immigration, but of poverty, just as crime vicims and crime perpetrators are usually of the same economic class. Duh. Which suggests another course of action, namely education for all classes, which improves self-respect, creates employment, and elevates participants to the point where they no long are counted among the poor vicitims or poor perpetrators of crime.
So where does that leave us? According to the study findings, perhaps we should deport poor US-born citizens first, since they represent the majority of crime, see if things stabilize then, if not, as a next step, we deport poor foreign-born immigrants, thereby eliminating the causes of crime by its chief demographic components.
Or, coming full circle, just educate the lot of them and hope they get rich, so they will no longer have a need to prey upon the poor, which by then should no longer be poor.
When it’s all done, we should have a fine young generation of Legislators and aides, with latent criminal tendencies and, thus, a group of people we already are accustomed to.
So the choice is to deport and create enemies who will return more lawless than before, or assimilate and educate so they can grow up to be just like us.
What say you?
Disappearance of Hilton Head Island couple baffles friends, police
A Hilton Head Island businessman and his wife, who is an attorney, have disappeared, baffling friends, neighbors and the authorities.
John and Elizabeth Calvert were last seen around 5:30 p.m. Monday at a meeting in Harbour Town, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
John Calvert, 47, owns the company that manages the Harbour Town Yacht Basin and Harbour Town Resorts, which has 125 rental properties.
Elizabeth Calvert, 45, is a Savannah business attorney at HunterMaclean, the state’s largest law firm outside Atlanta.
http://www.islandpacket.com/news/local/story/245580.html
Gordon, I don’t know where you get the notion that criminal behavior is caused by poverty, irrespective of personal morality.
99% of all the people who have ever lived were “poorer” than the typical American living in “official poverty”.
The facts speak for themselves:
* 99% of the illegal immigrants are very poor.
* There are 800,000 illegals in the US who are convicted felons, and warrants outstanding for 750,000 illegal for serious crimes.
* 10% of the prison population in some states is comprised of deportable aliens.
Not all societies are at the same level of technological, social, or moral development. Many people coming here are barely out of the Stone Age, with only a primitive concept of morality. For example, child molestation and child prostitution are not even crimes in Mexico. I think that might have something to do with Latino gangs kidnapping and smuggling girls into America for prostitution.
America can have its pick of the brightest, healthiest, and most well-behaved people. It is foolish to take the dregs of the world just for some cheap labor to rake our yards, especially when we already have poor citizens who are unemployed.
It is damn stupid to let our newest residents select themselves by sneaking into the country illegally.
American citizens have no obligation to provide education to the citizens of other countries, whether they remain home or sneak into America.
Public education has not erased poverty and crime among millions of American citizens, so I would at least expect the liberals to get education working before they load it up with 30,000,000 more people who cannot even speak English.
But it does provide another excuse for government schools to explain away their inability to deliver what they promise.
Lee … in the neighborhood where I grew up, most grandparents did not speak English, nor did they all arrive here legally. Regardless, they were a part of the community and contributed much to it. They owned stores and businesses; they became employers and employees. Like today’s illegals, they were poor and came here to work. We accepted them, and educated their children, regardless of whether they came from the “higher civilizations” you reference. They brought “the old country” with them, and their traditions became a part of our lives, too. … Some migrations defy the law and still produce better lives — and better nations. I don’t advocate illegal immigration, but it is a part of our history, driven more by global economics than by policy … How would you rewrite the following inscription from the Statue of Liberty? Would you add legal footnotes saying we will accept only “the best and brightest” from the most law-abiding nations, turning away those who don’t meet your elite qualifications?
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Gordon, you are living in the past. A few million Poles or Italians spread over 50 years were a lot easier to assimilate into American culture than the sudden dumping of 100,000,000 Latinos in 35 years.
The Latinos from Central America and Mexico are mostly came from much less advanced cultures than Italy and Poland. More importantly, these previous immigrants came here with the ATTITUDE of becoming American, and to for the opportunity to work, not to glom onto every welfare program, like today’s illegals.
Now America is overpopulated. We don’t need more people. We certainly don’t need the bottom of the barrel illiterate laborers to compete in advanced manufacturing economy of today.
Killing whales for oil and dumping raw sewerage into rivers were okay 200 years ago, but not today. Yet many “liberals” still cling to a (non)policy of immigration which is just as antiquated and destructive.
From The State on 2/5/2008:
Columbia city officials are willing to spend up to $35,000 to design a new skate park at Owens Field. City Council members are likely to approve the fee at Wednesday’s meeting.
The item is on the council’s consent agenda, which means it has no opposition.
—
The skate park is expected to cost several hundred thousand dollars.
It’s all about priorities. Skate park or murders? I know it’s tough… but maybe the Mayor could help to re-focus the priorities.
We’ve also got legislators who are going to introduce a bill mandating that TV replays be used for high school championship basketball games.
These are the important issues that our government needs to be working on, right?
Again, it’s all about priorities.
Ever since the state legislature started second-guessing Frank McGuire, I knew they had delusions of their abilities.
Bread and circuses take priority over handheld radios for police, much less hiring more police.
Lee … I go by what I see in my own community, not just past experience. Ten years ago, employers here couldn’t staff their businesses. Now they can, with immigrants, just like I saw growing up. Unemployment is down, the labor force is larger, crime has not exploded because of these Hispanic workers, nor are welfare rolls swollen with lazy foreign workers. To the contrary, church attendance is growing — faster than the churches can adapt — and many new immigrants are succeeding in business community. … To threaten an influx of 100 million lawless tribesman from Central America is scare-mongering at its worst.
Gordon, Lee believes in Aryan supremacy. It is hard to argue with those kinds of presuppositions.
Apparently, Herb. But it’s hard to let that pass without comment. I know Lee’s big on “facts” derived from statistics, but ..
“There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
The 100,000,000 are already here.
Demographers say that if we had controlled immigration to historical levels, the population would have stabilized at 170,000,000 the early 1970s.
Instead, we walked away from trying to control who comes in. 80% are from Central America, and now they have had children, enabling them to stay with their “anchor babies”.
You can’t say we have problems with unemployment among blacks in SC (which we do), and say we need more illiterate, low-skilled laborers from Mexico because there is a “labor shortage”. There is only a shortage of cheap labor that can be rotated so as to avoid paying benefits and most taxes for a relative handful of unethical businessmen and their lackies in office and the news media.
It is not just the illiterate workers that are a problem. There are 500,000 degreed, unemployed American software engineers, yet industry claims there is a shortage that must be filled with H1B workers from India. A bunch of these workers are not very good, but I finally figured out from experience that big companies didn’t care if their work was a throwaway, because the real benefit was in suppressing the wages of the thousands of American employees.
And Mr. Hirsch, don’t try to run the name-calling, and accusations of racism and xenophobia game. A lot of white liberals feel they can’t criticize anyone, or it makes them feel magnanimous to espouse their White Man’s Burden by giving away America, which they don’t own.
If you think we need to pack a billion people in here, pave everything and gaudy it up, explain why, because I haven’t yet heard any good reasons. In fact, I rarely even find anyone who is willing to try to make an argument.
Herb, as usual, keeps it to a short racist insult. The Nazi gambit just makes him look foolish. It is so overused by “liberals” without an argument.
Lee … another recent report contrary to your position.
Immigrants don’t raise U.S. crime rate
Cox News Service
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.27.2007
WASHINGTON — Immigrants — both legal and illegal — do not raise the rate of crime in the United States, according to a study released Monday.
In every ethnic group, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are less educated, said the study by the Immigration Policy Center, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington. This holds especially true for Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the illegal population.
The authors of the study say it dispels the common notion — which they say is propagated by excessive media coverage of crimes and gang activity — that immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.
“The misperception that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates is deeply rooted in American public opinion and is sustained by media anecdotes and popular myth,” said Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California-Irvine. “This perception is not supported empirically. In fact, it is refuted by the preponderance of scientific evidence.”
The incarceration rate of U.S.- born men 18 to 39 years old in 2000 was 3.5 percent — five times higher than the incarceration rate of their immigrant counterparts, the study found.
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/171109
And another:
The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation:Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:V9nvvhR77BAJ:www.ailf.org/ipc/special_report/sr_022107.pdf+immigration+and+crime+report&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us
According to the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) is administered by the federal government to reimburse states and local jurisdictions for costs incurred for the incarceration of criminal aliens, 4.24% of them are incarcerated now, and another 4% have outstanding warrants.
4.24% is greater than 3.5%, last time I checked.
100% of illegal aliens are criminals, as soon as they set foot here.
95% of those charged with homocide by the LAPD since 1997 have been illegal aliens (1,200 to 1,500 per year).
> There are 500,000 degreed, unemployed
>American software engineers, yet industry
>claims there is a shortage that must be
>filled with H1B workers from India.
I can attest to that. The software project I am on now had as many as 20 people on it last summer. 15 were H1B Indians.
They work for lower pay and don’t make trouble when asked to work unpaid overtime for fear of losing their jobs.
It won’t be long before the only jobs left for American workers will be in the government or in reality TV.
Lee … We can agree that immigration should be controlled for many of the reasons you suggest. And we can agree that healthy debate should not be encumbered with accusations of Nazism, etc. But I can’t agree with the stereotyping you engage in regarding immigrant origins, or your sweeping objections to certain groups of people.
You can’t just adopt the draw-bridge mentality and decide that it’s time to lock the gates, or decline admission to people who you perceive as unable to contribute at your level of expectation. That’s elitist nonsense, or worse.
Doug … I’m in the software business. ALL of our programmers are American. We looked at outsourcing overeas and rejected the costs involved, and ethics. It didn’t make sense, for us at least. We also struggle to find software engineers who are truly qualified. The unemployment stats may be real, but the qualifications of those unemployed have been lousy, at least from what we’ve seen.
“95% of those charged with homocide by the LAPD since 1997 have been illegal aliens (1,200 to 1,500 per year).”
—————–
NOW, Lee, you’re resorting to bogus “facts” and urban myths:
Media coverage may be feeding illegal-immigrant-crime beliefs
By Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
… One widely circulated e-mail cited the Los Angeles Times as saying that 95 percent of murder warrants and 75 percent of people on the most-wanted list in Los Angeles were illegal immigrants.
“I saw that e-mail, and it’s wrong,” said Mesa Police Chief George Gascsn, a former assistant police chief in that city.
“By and large, criminality of Hispanics in LA is very proportionate to their size in the population,” Gascsn said.
The same is true for Mesa, he said, where slightly more than half of all violent crimes are committed by Anglos and one-third by Hispanics, roughly proportionate to the population.
The study by Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California-Irvine is flawed because he his basic data counts only 65,000 illegal aliens in prison in 2005.
The DOJ reports in 2004 that there were 290,500 Hispanic males in state or federal correctional facilities.
The reimbursement figures for 2006 show over 300,000 illegal aliens in prison, so Rumbault’s numbers are not just low, but bogus.
There are actually 350,000 illegal aliens in state and federal prison, when you count the states not requesting federal reimbursement.
35,000 were released for lack of jail space.
At the county level, there are estimated to be another 90,000 illegal aliens serving convictions.
None of those count those on parole and probation, although since 2006, most of those on parole and probation are now supposed to be deported by INS.
117,000 non-violent offenders were deported by INS in 2006.
Another 400,000 are classified by ICE as “absconders”, ordered deported but who cannot be located. 100,000 of them are convicted criminals who were released from jail or prison.
Gordon, I am glad to see you acknowledging that there are 500,000 unemployed American softare engineers and millions of unemployed black Americans…
… but you still think they should be replaced with cheaper immigrants.
I guess I just believe in trying to improve the skills of Americans and put them back to work, rather than taking the low road in a race to the bottom with Red China.
More, Lee …
‘Immigrants Bring Crime’ Is a Myth
Walter Ewing, Posted: Feb 22, 2007
Among the many troubling aspects of the public debate over immigration is the power of myths over facts. One of the most enduring myths about immigration, despite literally decades of evidence to the contrary, is the belief that immigrants are more likely to commit crime than the native-born.
This myth is so widespread and unquestioned that it has been the catalyst for scores of local governments to consider anti-immigrant ordinances over the past year. These calls to crack down on undocumented immigrants, the employers who hire them and the landlords who rent to them, are framed in part as “anti-crime” ordinances.
The city council of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, for instance, passed an ordinance last September claiming that “illegal immigration leads to higher crime rates” and that the council therefore must protect legal residents of the city from “crimes committed by illegal aliens.”
Because most of the undocumented immigrants in Hazleton and other communities throughout the United States are young men from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America, who have little money or formal education, it is assumed that they are more likely to commit crimes than the native-born.
Government and academic studies, however, have demonstrated repeatedly for over a century that immigrants actually are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. Even though immigration has increased dramatically over the past decade and a half, the crime rate in the United States has declined.
Since 1994, the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States has more than doubled to 12 million. Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, now comprise just under 13 percent of the population. Yet, according to the FBI, between 1994 and 2005 the violent crime rate (murder, robbery, rape, assault) fell 34.2 percent and the property crime rate (burglary, theft) dropped 26.4 percent.
Cities with large and growing immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Chicago also experienced this downward trend in crime. If immigration—either legal or undocumented—were associated with crime, then crime rates should be rising.
An upcoming report from the Immigration Policy Center further dispels the notion that immigration and crime are connected. Using data from the 2000 Census, the report shows that immigrants are less likely than the native-born to be behind bars. Among men age 18 to 39 (who comprise the vast majority of inmates in federal and state prisons and local jails), immigrants were five times less likely to be incarcerated than the native-born in 2000.
About 3.5 percent of native-born men were in prison, compared with 0.7 percent of foreign-born men. Immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala were much less likely to be in prison than native-born, non-Hispanic whites. Roughly 0.7 percent of foreign-born Mexican men and 0.5 percent of foreign-born Salvadoran and Guatemalan men were in prison, compared with 1.7 percent of native-born, non-Hispanic white men.
These findings are not new. Three government commissions investigated the relationship between immigration and crime during the last era of large-scale immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when millions of immigrants arrived from Italy, Ireland, Russia, Poland, and other nations in Europe. All three commissions came to the same conclusion: immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than natives.
As the [Dillingham] Immigration Commission of 1911 concluded: “No satisfactory evidence has yet been produced to show that immigration has resulted in an increase in crime disproportionate to the increase in adult population. Such comparable statistics of crime and population as it has been possible to obtain indicate that immigrants are less prone to commit crime than are native Americans.”
Despite a century’s worth of evidence that immigration does not breed crime, the stereotype of immigrants as criminals continues to flourish in the media and among policymakers. Popular movies and television shows often feature gun-wielding, drug-dealing criminals from south of the border. News reports of violent crimes committed by gangs such as the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) often overshadow the fact that an extraordinarily small number of immigrants are in gangs and that gangs are found in every ethnic group among both natives and the foreign-born.
Adding insult to injury, many politicians regularly declare their resolve to stem the criminal tide allegedly unleashed by undocumented immigrants. Even President Bush, who favors immigration reform that creates more legal channels for immigration to the United States, declared in a May 15, 2006 address to the nation that illegal immigration “brings crime to our communities.”
There is no denying that crime is a serious problem in the United States. But it is not a problem created or even aggravated by immigration. Quite the opposite, in fact. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes of all types than the native-born. This suggests that crime is linked not to one’s place of birth, but to the many other forces which foster crime in this country, especially in relatively poor communities: high rates of divorce and family disintegration, high rates of alcohol and drug abuse, etc.
The solution to crime does not lie in immigration policy. And the solution to undocumented immigration does not lie in misguided “get tough” policies that scapegoat immigrants as criminals.
An interesting thing about Rumbault’s study is that the longer illegal Latinos remain in America, the more likely they are to end up in jail. The rates of incarceration for those here 10 years are double that of those here 5 years, and those here 15 years are triple the rate for 5 years.
Rather than assimilating into law-abiding, working American culture, many of these poor illegals remain poor, and become part of the poverty culture, where criminal behavior is accepted behavior. Male Latino illegals who remain in the USA for a long time trend to the crime rates of American urban blacks – over 20% of black men are convicted felons.
Gordon, I pre-emptively debunked your bogus Google propaganda before you could paste it. The raw numbers don’t support the junk “studies” fed you by our socialist media.
There are many causes of unemployment, Lee, most having nothing to do with immigrants. You’re gross over-simplifications aside, having a degree does not always equate to competence. I’ve worked with graduates of major American universities who are functionally illiterate. There degrees were legitimate, but bogus on the job. We have a competence deficit, and you can bet China and India are going to fill it if we don’t do something about it.
In India, you can purchase a graduate degree. I find most Indian programmers to be worthless. Their so-called “engineering schools” are below our tech schools in difficulty.
Colleges here take the low road by packing in foreign students who are more subservient to the American faculty, and are not competition for faculty jobs. The right thing would be to constrain the numbers of foreigners, and fix what is wrong with graduate schools that make them so unattractive to American engineers and scientists.
The Aryan supremacy thing is nothing new, Lee. You so much as acknowledged that yourself months ago. Pre-suppositions are always integral to any debate, which is why I find it not very helpful to talk about statistics, etc., if the basis is wrong. You are going to find what you are already programmed to look for, based on your presuppositions that a certain race and culture is superior to all others.
As for your statistics, I’ve already given one very simple example, and many more can be trotted out, where one measurement in a population group differs from another by more than 1000% (there I go with statistics myself). Since statistics are dependent on many factors, it takes a rigorous analysis of the statistics themselves to determine their accuracy, and often there is no good conclusion. How many Muslims are there in the United States? Between 600,000 and 8 million, depending on your criteria. Any number between those is a defensible number. The same can be said for most statistics.
But there are resources for data, and I have some very simple key standards that I can go by. For example, I ask people who live in Switzerland, men who live there, what the law is for gun ownership, and they send me back answers. Now why would you think that I would trust their answers more than I would yours, since I know that you will attempt to prove your point at any cost? Since I know they are telling me the truth, I then know that you are not, at least not all of it, and probably not the key part of it. It is that simple. So why would I trust your statistics, if I can’t trust your statements about plain laws?
Your bias is obvious to everyone but you, evidently. Since you claim to be right all the time–well that is something you are always out to prove, and it is a pretty heavy load to bear.
Let’s take another example, Lee. You said that I “leave the blog for days.” That is not very intellectual.
Pre-supposition–it is only intellectual if you continue to post here day in and day out.
That is plain stupid. A wise person knows when to shut up. Which is why I should shut up more than I do. Try it yourself. Everyone else will get a breather.
Lee is a bigot. He’s made up his mind and facts aren’t going to convince him. If all else fails, he’ll call you a communist.
Police protection should be the responsibility of state and local officials, not the Federal Government. However, our state chooses to spend it’s money restoring Confederate submarines instead of providing essential services.
Herb, you are making arguments for whatever it is you believe ( of feel); you are just name-calling, saying that you don’t have to justify your support of hordes of illegal aliens to people who are “___you labels__”
I see a lot of condescending racism in white liberals who lack the courage to discuss any social issue involving misbehavior by people who mostly are non-white.
You folks post phony studies by hired academics, which aren’t supported by the raw crime numbers from the DOJ, INS, ICE, and NCIS – which I posted. You were suckered, mainly because you want to believe a lie.
Maybe America does need some immigrants, but we don’t know what talents and how many until we seal the borders, delport every immigrant, temp worker, and illegal alien so we can properly assess the situation. Their skin color has nothing to do with it.
You can’t stay in lots of countries unless you bring $250,000 cash. You can’t work indefinitely, no matter how talented you are. Mexico has much stricter immigration laws that it tells us we should have.
Mexico and Central America are exporting a lot of their social problems here, and a significant portion of those coming here are criminals, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes.
It’s just another social problem which white socialistic liberals lack the ability to face honestly and objectively, or actually enjoy because it degrades America closer to their vision of a flat, mediocre world.