U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan by Ethnicity

You used to hear all the time about how minorities are more likely to die fighting America's wars than whites are, but the ethnic distribution of military deaths no longer interests the mainstream media. This Pentagon document lists military deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom (i.e., Afghanistan) from October 7, 2001 through February 28, 2009.

Leaving out the five ambiguous cases (mixed or unknown), minorities have suffered only 20 percent of the military deaths in Operation Enduring Freedom, despite making up 38 percent of the 20 to 24 year olds in 2008. Per capita, Non-Hispanic whites have been 2.47 times as likely as minorities to die in Afghanistan.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Passing the hat

I wanted to thank everybody who contributed on the first day of the iSteve Panhandling Drive, and apologize to the earlybirds who were frustrated by the technical glitches that have become such a tradition. I've got most of them fixed (knock on wood).

There are, at the moment, three ways to give me money.

You can make tax deductible credit card contributions to me here (then, under "Steve Sailer Project Option" click on the "Make a Donation" button); or fax credit card details here (please put "Steve Sailer Project" on the fax); or you can snail mail checks made out to "VDARE Foundation" and marked on the memo line (lower left corner) “Steve Sailer” to:

VDARE Foundation
P.O. Box 211
Litchfield, CT 06759

Second: You can send me an email and I'll send you my P.O. Box address.

Third: You can use Paypal to send me money directly, either by just using any credit card or if you have a specific Paypal account.

If you want to use your credit card, click "Continue" on the lower center-left to fill in your credit card info. If you have a Paypal account fill in your Paypal ID and password on the lower right of the screen.

I'll try to get the Amazon donation link working in a day or two, but, in the past, Amazon has been limited to $50 (hint, hint) and tends to stop working as soon as I've collected more than a pittance.

Thanks. I appreciate it, deeply.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Major Hasan: Stereotypes and Dual Loyalties

Why was the Palestinian Muslim terrorist / U.S. Army major such a hot potato for the mainstream media last week that they tried various misdirection ploys, such as the New York Times' November 7th article "When Soldiers Snap"?

A few reasons:

1. The press has indoctrinated itself to despise stereotypes, partly for ideological reasons, partly for economic ones -- "Man Bites Dog" is a better headline than "Dog Bites Man." Yet another Palestinian Muslim terrorist is a "Dog Bites Man" story.

2. Another reason is that Major Hasan is such a classic example of "dual loyalties." We've all been told over and over again that the entire concept of dual loyalties is a baseless anti-Semitic smear and therefore doesn't exist.

In truth, of course, multiple loyalties are an unavoidable reality of life, which is precisely why George Washington's Farewell Address (the single most carefully considered utterance by the Founding Fathers -- it was worked on over four years by Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) devotes so much effort to warning about how to handle them. For example:

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

3. There's the Barack Hussein Obama angle. The press has a strong feeling that they must protect Obama from anything that could tangentially tarnish him. Of course, if they would just read Obama's memoir carefully, they would see that Islam never had any appeal for him -- it's too universalist. The President liked all of The Autobiography of Malcolm X until the uninspiring conclusion when Malcolm converts from the Nation of Islam to orthodox Islam after seeing the races mix on pilgrimage in Mecca.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Major Hasan's Powerpoint: Can't say he didn't warn us

From the Washington Post:

Under a slide titled "Comments," he wrote: "If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God against injustices of the 'infidels'; ie: enemies of Islam, then Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc." [sic]

The last bullet point on that page reads simply: "We love death more then (sic) you love life!"

Under the "Conclusions" page, Hasan wrote that "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam," and that "Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly -- will vary!"

The final page, labeled "Recommendation," contained only one suggestion:

"Department of Defense should allow Muslims (sic) Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events."

Of course, conscientious objection status is only granted to pacifists, not to people who would rather hurt us than the enemy.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Political correctness strikes again

Peter Brimelow points to this Telegraph article:

Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut

By Nick Allen in Fort Hood

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.

It was the latest in a series of "red flags" about his state of mind that have emerged since the massacre at Fort Hood, America's largest military installation, on Thursday. ...

Fellow doctors have recounted how they were repeatedly harangued by Hasan about religion and that he openly claimed to be a "Muslim first and American second."

One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints. [Emphasis added]

Meanwhile, Dennis Mangan points to an NYT article that begins:

KILLEEN, Tex. — Leaders of the vibrant Muslim community here ...

Here's the UPI article, "Bush had called for laxer airport security" that I wrote on the evening of September 11, 2001 pointing out that George W. Bush had denounced airport security personnel for paying more attention to Arabs and Muslim fliers, and then had had Norman Mineta's Transportation Department start a program to stomp out airport profiling.

Also, we now know that the airport ticket agent who checked in Mohammed Atta on the morning of 9/11/2001 said to himself, as he told Oprah in 2005:

"I got an instant chill when I looked at [Atta]. I got this grip in my stomach and then, of course, I gave myself a political correct slap."

Michael Touhey told a reporter:

Then Tuohey went through an internal debate that still haunts him.

"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," he said. "You've checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you've never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed."

It wasn't just Atta's demeanor that caught Tuohey's attention.

"When I looked at their tickets, they had first-class, one-way tickets - $2,500 tickets. Very unusual," he said. "I guess they're not coming back. Maybe this is the end of their trip."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The 2009 iSteve Panhandling Drive

I was looking at my bank account, and I was vigorously reminded that I haven't run a fundraising drive since the stock market crash of 2008. I usually run two panhandling efforts per year, but my last full-bore one started September 11, 2008, when the transmission went out on my '98 Accord. The fundraiser was going great guns until Lehman Bros. went belly up four days later, at which point we all started stocking up on canned goods. Donations, unsurprisingly, dried up.

Well, 1,067 blog postings later, I'm back with my hand out.

It hasn't been a great 14 months for the nation, but I think it's been a pretty good period here, in a Robert Conquest kind of way. Despite all the newfangled alternatives to reading blogs, such as MyFace (or whatever the kids call it), readership here is higher than ever, currently at 7,997 unique visits per day and 12,224 pages read daily.

Between blogging, VDARE.com, Taki's Magazine, The American Conservative, and (by the way, did I ever mention it?) writing a book, that must add up to about a half million words since the last time I passed the hat.

Your generosity makes it possible for me to make a living writing whatever I think is right.

There are, at the moment, three ways to give me money.

You can make tax deductible credit card contributions to me here (then, under "Steve Sailer Project Option" click on the "Make a Donation" button); or fax credit card details here (please put "Steve Sailer Project" on the fax); or you can snail mail checks made out to "VDARE Foundation" and marked on the memo line (lower left corner) “Steve Sailer” to:

VDARE Foundation
P.O. Box 211
Litchfield, CT 06759

Second: You can send me an email and I'll send you my P.O. Box address.

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Or, if the button doesn't appear, just click here.

Either fill in your your Paypal ID and password on the lower right of the screen, or click "Continue" on the lower center-left to fill in your credit card info.

I'll try to get the Amazon donation link working in a day or two, but, in the past, Amazon has been limited to $50 (hint, hint) and tends to stop working as soon as I've collected more than a pittance.

Thanks. I appreciate it, deeply.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

November 9, 1989

Dennis Dutton's Arts & Letters Daily has a heap o' links, and Ross Douthat has a good column.

Let's party like it's 1989 with songs about the Berlin Wall:

David Bowie: Heroes, 1977: Video / Lyrics (and here's a terrific live version video, supposedly from a show in Berlin in 2002; it doesn't have as much of the great Robert Fripp wall-of-sound of the studio version, but Bowie looks like a million bucks at age 55, kind of like how Cary Grant reached his peak at the same age in North by Northwest).

Sex Pistols: Holidays in the Sun, 1977: Video / Lyrics ("It's guys like me they'd shoot first")

Jesus Jones: Right Here, Right Now, 1990: Video / Lyrics

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

A busy week

From my new VDARE.com column:

It was a busy week for Invite the World / Invade the World / In Hock to the World news:

First, Gallup announced the results of polling 259,542 adults in 135 countries during 2007-2009:

700 Million Worldwide Desire to Migrate Permanently
U.S. tops desired destination countries

“… Gallup finds about 16% of the world's adults would like to move to another country permanently if they had the chance. This translates to roughly 700 million worldwide -- more than the entire adult population of North and South America combined.”

Second, a U.S. Army major / Palestinian terrorist shot two score soldiers at Fort Hood. Texas. President Barack Hussein Obama rushed to warn that there must be no rush to stereotype Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The New York Times played along, running a five-part red herring discussion on "Combat Stress and the Fort Hood Gunman." Presumably, Major Hasan, who had never seen combat, was suffering from PTSD: Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Third, the government announced that the unemployment rate had exceeded 10 percent for the first time in 26 years. But discussion of the role of immigration in unemployment was simply nonexistent in the Main Stream Media.

When things go very wrong, as they have, the most likely causes are ones that Nobody who is Anybody expected. Their conceptual framework leaves them unable to cope with unthinkable reality.

In contrast, my alternative Invite / Invade / In Hock analysis of the Bush-Obama Era’s dominant approach helps point out linkages behind events that baffle those brainwashed by the conventional wisdom.

For example, if you stop and think about it, you’ll notice that Hasan, whose mother was born in Jerusalem, was following in the tradition of Palestinian terrorist Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968.

Few conceive of Sirhan as a Palestinian terrorist because nobody in American thought much about Palestine or terrorism before George Habash masterminded the skyjacking of four jetliners in 1970. Hence, most Americans mentally lump Sirhan in with the 1960s domestic assassins Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray.

Yet, Sirhan certainly saw himself as a Palestinian terrorist. Sirhan murdered Bobby Kennedy on the first anniversary of Israel’s June 5, 1967 attack on its Arab neighbors because RFK promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel.

That there’s an inevitable conflict between “Invade” and “Invite” in terms of domestic terrorism is something that the Kennedy brothers never figured out.

Read it there and comment about it here.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Last week's election

A reader sends me an email asking me to write an article on last week's elections, but then proceeds to do all the work for me, so here it is:

I know you must be busy, but if you get a chance, I would ask that you write an article discussing the racial implications of the various 2009 elections. I would love to hear your thoughts. There really seemed to be a lot of what could only be described as "bloc voting" by whites, and I wonder if you think the election of Barack Obama, and the triumphalism of the mainstream media ("new era," etc.) may have had something to do with it.

In the race for Virginia Governor, the mainstream media keeps declaring it an "issues" oriented race, focusing on "pocketbook" issues, that McDonnell did better on than his opponent Creigh Deeds. As a Virginia resident who followed the elections, this doesn't explain it well enough for me. There has to be another angle. Yes, every ad for McDonnell I saw focused vaguely on "jobs." But other than ads attacking McDonnell for his 20-year old Master's thesis, every ad Creigh Deeds ran focused vaguely on "jobs." Everybody knew McDonnell's conservative positions on social issues, and that should have hurt him in what is (although still moderately conservative) becoming a more socially liberal state. Yet they still gave him a landslide victory, with 67% of the white vote and 54% of women of all races (the results weren't broken down by race and gender).

McDonnell's ads, and I think I saw most of them, in no way ever actually mentioned any details as to what his "jobs" plan was, how it would create jobs, and how it was different from his opponent's plan, almost like Nixon's secret plan to get out of Vietnam. His ads almost seemed to be providing explanatory cover, rather than trying to convince voters, basically having a hidden subtext of "Vote for me for racial reasons, and if a white liberal neighbor asks you...say you voted for me for 'jobs'."

I don't know much about New Jersey politics, but the reasons offered for the Republican win in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, corruption and taxes, just do not seem plausible. To begin with, New Jersey politicians have always been corrupt, many more so than John Corzine, yet always get re-elected. And as far as taxes, the only candidate who really seemed to have a solid tax-cutting platform, independent Chris Daggett, only received 6% of the vote. In addition to this, Chris Christie, although touted as a "moderate" post-election, always identified as "pro-life" in a dogmatically "pro-choice" state, and even proposed modest restrictions on abortion. Added to this, the Corzine campaign's focus on Christie's refusal to pay for mammograms, and you would think this would have hurt him with white female voters, but it couldn't have hurt too much, because Christie won 59% of the white vote (with 6% for Daggett), and still won 45% of women of all races (results weren't broken down by race and gender together).

67% of the white vote in Virginia and 59% in liberal New Jersey (65% if you gave Christie Daggett's votes)...these are ethnic bloc voting percentages comparable to those of Hispanics or Asians. And Barack Obama, personally, couldn't explain the defeats, since his approval rating outperformed the Democratic share of the vote. Even though the Republican Party is horrible on racial issues for whites, they are still, as you have noted, the party of white racial identity.

Four other results of note were:

-Wake County, NC school-board elections, where candidates pledging to end busing and forced racial integration won a majority for the first time in an "easy victory"

-Westchester County, NY, a liberal upper-income New York suburb, where the long-time County Executive, who supported a federal lawsuit settlement to purchase homes in upper-income white neighborhoods, and use them as "affordable housing" for lower income blacks and Hispanics, was soundly defeated by his Republican opponent, who pledged to oppose the settlement and fight the lawsuit, by a margin of 58-42

-Atlanta, GA mayoral race, now headed to a runoff, where whites appear to have voted as a bloc for the white candidate (just another liberal in a field of liberals)

-New York mayoral race, where blacks appear to have voted as a bloc (unsurprisingly) for the black candidate, and whites appear to have NOT turned out in large numbers for mayor Michael Bloomberg, who still won, but narrowly

If you get a chance, I would really like to read your view on these events. Either way, keep up the great work and take care.

I don't have much to add other than here's a press release from an interest group claiming that the GOP gubernatorial candidate got 58.5% of the Asian vote in Virginia.

Perhaps the GOP is indeed turning into the Covert Non-Black Party. But, will they eventually need to, you know, deliver some policies that actually help their voters?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Sammy Sosa is Michael Jacksonizing his own skin

We haven't had a good Sammy Sosa story in a while, so here's a new one with pictures of how the ex-Cubs slugger is only half as dark as he used to be. Some of the difference is probably just the lighting in the latest picture -- my passport photo, for example, is so overexposed that I look like Tilda Swinton's dad's ghost. Still, the article makes clear by the lengths to which Sosa's PR agent goes on, that something is going on.

Steve's Idea of the Day for Bored Reporters: show these pictures to White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. Record his comments. (For readers unfamiliar with his personality, here's the video Ozzie Guillen Visits a Sick Child from the Chicago public access cable show We're Geniuses in France.)

And from the always reliable Daily Mail of London, the umpteenth confirmation of Sailer's Rule of Female Journalism:

Why are so many black and Asian women desperate to be white?
By Yamin Alibhai-Brown

You might think that with all the media interest in this question, journalists might occasionally look up on Google something about anthropologist Peter Frost's book Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice, which answers the question. But, nah, finding out the answer is hardly the point of asking, so Frost's book is almost unknown. Frost, by the way, explain why Sammy's new highly-contrasting-cheeks-and-lips look is not a good look for guys.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Toby Gerhart update

Stanford's running back, whom I wrote about a few weeks ago, rushed for 223 yards on 38 carries in Stanford's 51-42 upset of #8 Oregon (who crushed USC last week). Toby Gerhart now has 1217 yards in 9 games and 16 touchdowns for 6-3 Stanford.

Phil Knight puts his Nike money into Oregon, so Oregon's offense is almost unstoppable -- over 600 yards last week against USC, and this week 570 yards in only 22 minutes of possession. Stanford's strategy was to get the lead and have Gerhart use up the clock.

He has the opportunity to petition for another season of college eligibility because he missed all but one game of his sophomore year. I've got to imagine that some Silicon Valley bigshots who are Stanford alums would make it worth his while to do so, especially now that Stanford's freshman quarterback, Andrew Luck, looks like he'll be pretty good next year. Why go to the NFL and sit on the bench or get your body permanently wrecked as a pro running back when you can be the toast of Silicon Valley?

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Should Hasan be charged with treason?

If he survives, the Ft. Hood shooter will of course be charged with murder, but it's reasonable to inquire whether treason should also be charged. After all, for a major in the U.S. Army, trained at taxpayer expense in the use of weapons, to shoot 40 unarmed comrades-in-arms would seem like a reasonable example of waging war on the United States.

However, the Constitution's delineation of treason might not cover this:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

What does "levying war" mean? Although "levying" is sometimes today said to be the same as "waging," that doesn't appear to be the legal definition. In one of the the treason cases (Bollman) growing out of the still mysterious Aaron Burr conspiracy, the Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court ruled in 1807, "But there must be an actual assembling of men for the treasonable purpose, to constitute a levying of war." In other words, "levying" means raising a body of warriors. Therefore, whether Major Hasan plotted solely alone or was conspiring with others, and if so, did they in some fashion "assemble," would appear to be relevant.

On the other hand, the second type of treason, "or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" would appear to be an easier hurdle to leap. The first time the Supreme Court upheld a treason conviction was in the 1947 Haupt case in which naturalized citizen Hans Mark Haupt was sentenced to life in prison for sheltering in his Chicago home his son, a German spy (one of the eight saboteurs landed by a German sub in a semi-farcical failed infiltration). The son was convicted by military tribunal and executed. In the father's case, noted civil libertarian Justice William O. Douglas wrote the majority opinion upholding the father's conviction, while Justice Jackson wrote a lonely dissent arguing that the father's intentions were filial rather than treasonous.

Since the elder Haupt was legally guilty of treason for merely helping his son, then Hasan's shooting two score American soldiers in cold blood would appear to be an even better example of "adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." However, that does raise the issue of who exactly our Enemies are, a question that has been left rather ambiguous by Congress' refusal to issue a Declaration of War since 1942.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

I knew all along that the recession had to be his fault

The economy collapsed when Lehman Bros. went bankrupt on September 15, 2008. Joe Wiesenthal of Clusterstock has now brought to the public's attention the real villain behind the economic crash. On p. 120 of Andrew Ross Sorkin's book Too Big to Fail, in a discussion of Lehman's president Joseph Gregory:

He loved being the in-house philosopher-king, an evangelist on the subject of workplace diversity and a devotee of the theories described in Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink. He gave out copies of the book and had even hired the author to lecture employees on trusting their instincts when making difficult decisions. In an industry based on analyzing raw data, Gregory was defiantly a gut man.

Now that I think about it, I realize I always had a gut feeling that this global crash was, somehow, all Malcolm's fault. It just had to be. If only I'd trusted my instincts, like he told me to in Blink ... Imagine how much money I could have made shorting the stocks of companies that had paid Malcolm to make speeches to their employees!

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Blowback from Invite the World / Invade the World

Adrian Blomfield of the neocon Daily Telegraph does a great job of giving the Ft. Hood shooter's Palestinian cousins in Ramallah in the West Bank (Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian National Authority) enough rope:

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the suspected shooter at Fort Hood U.S Army Post where according to authorities 12 people were shot and killed and 31 other were wounded Photo: EPA

Speaking from their home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Hasan's relatives painted a picture of a man cornered into an act of "lunacy" by the repeated discrimination of his peers and an attempt by the army to force him to serve in Afghanistan.

"They discriminated against him because he was a Muslim," Mohammed Mohammed, one of Hasan's cousins, told the Daily Telegraph. "We're not trying to make excuses for him but what we were told was that he was under a lot of pressure.

"What we imagine is that he could not take this bad treatment and gave vent unfortunately." ...

In the house next door, Hasan's brother Anas had locked himself indoors with his wife, refusing to speak to anyone, including his relatives.

According to his cousins, Hasan was badly scarred by the deaths of his parents in 1998 and 2001. Along with his two brothers, he became increasingly devout, they said.

"They became very religious after their mother died," Mohammed Hasan said. "They were very observant. They prayed a lot."

Yet the two cousins insisted that the major's religion was not tinged with political fanaticism, although they said he had become increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative in recent years.

Even so, they had little reason to believe that he was a man on the edge.

"Nidal is a very stable minded person," Mohammed Mohammed said. "Why would he kill? He was against violence.

"His actions could have been in self defence – we don't know. Maybe they angered him to the point of cornering him and he felt he had no option."

They angrily rejected suggestions that their cousin's shooting spree had been motivated by a hatred for America or as an act of terrorism.

"My cousin is not a terrorist," said Mohammed Hasan. "He was born in America, he graduated from Virginia (Tech) University. He was proud to be graduate. He was always preaching about the US education system. He was an optimistic person. He loved life."

Although he had always wanted to follow other members of his family into the army, Hasan was shocked that he was never accepted as a true American, the cousins said.

He was constantly taunted and provoked until six months ago, he hired a lawyer to sue the army, the cousins said, explaining they kept in touch with developments in Hasan's life either through telephone calls to him and his family or from Hasan's brother, who returned to the West Bank four years ago.

They heard that he had become increasingly unhappy, both at the treatment of his peers and also because he had been ordered to deploy "in Iraq and Afghanistan". But the two cousins insisted that Hasan's opposition to being sent abroad was as much because he was planning to marry. [Whom?]

The two men also denounced the attention being given in the media to Hasan's religion.

"Had Hasan been a pure American, there wouldn't have been such a fuss about it," said Mohammed Mohammed. "There has been a lot of stress in the media about how he was an Arab, a Palestinian, a Muslim."

"If he had been someone else, he would immediately been identified by the government as a lunatic and the subject would have been closed."

"Our religion does not support violence, as the West believes."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

California v. Texas Again

From City Journal:

William Voegeli

The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy-Services Paradigm

California taxpayers don’t get much bang for their bucks.

In 1956, the economist Charles Tiebout provided the framework that best explains why people vote with their feet. The “consumer-voter,” as Tiebout called him, challenges government officials to “ascertain his wants for public goods and tax him accordingly.” Each jurisdiction offers its own package of public goods, along with a particular tax burden needed to pay for those goods. As a result, “the consumer-voter moves to that community whose local government best satisfies his set of preferences.” In selecting a jurisdiction, the mobile consumer-voter is, in effect, choosing a club to join based on the benefits that it offers and the dues that it charges.

America’s federal system allows, at the state level, for 50 different clubs to join. At first glance, the states seem to differ between those that bundle numerous high-quality public benefits with high taxes and those that offer packages of low benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over the ideal size and scope of government. Except for Oregon, John McCain carried every one of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels in the 2008 presidential election, while Barack Obama won every one of the 17 at the top of the list except for Wyoming and Alaska.

It’s not surprising, then, that an intense debate rages over which model is more satisfactory and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit, low-tax alternative succeeds not only on its own terms but also according to the criteria used by defenders of high benefits and high taxes. Whatever theoretical claims are made for imposing high taxes to provide generous government benefits, the practical reality is that these public goods are, increasingly, neither public nor good: their beneficiaries are mostly the service providers themselves, and their quality is poor. For evidence, look to the two largest states in the nation, which are fine representatives of the liberal and conservative alternatives ...

State and local government expenditures as a whole were 46.8 percent higher in California than in Texas in 2005–06—$10,070 per person compared with $6,858.

However, that needs to be adjusted for differences in price level, which is significantly higher in California than in Texas due to higher land costs. They are both huge states, but the whole point of living in California is to live in the narrow Mediterranean climate zone near the coast. In contrast, the eastern half of Texas is all livable, so land prices are low.

California's real problem is that its residents, on average, don't earn enough money to pay for living in an inherently expensive state.

Clearly, Texas's low tax - low spend model is the only one that makes sense for a state or a country with a huge Latino population. That assumption was behind the Rove-Bush Invite the World model, but it proved disastrous in high-cost California, which dragged down the rest of the country.

The concept that Latinos don't earn enough to pay for an expensive government is pretty obvious, but it's just off the radar screen. The liberal media just see more NAMs as more justification for more government spending and more votes for government spending.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Successful environmentalism

Actually, there are a lot of examples of environmental policies working. You don't hear much about them, though. For whatever reason, nobody ever promotes environmentalism by referring to past successes.

Ozone layer -- Saved by getting rid of certain chemicals, although their replacements might be causing global warming.

Acid rain -- Better scrubbers on smokestacks have largely fixed this problem. It turned out that the technology wasn't as costly as it seemed.

Smog in LA -- About an order of magnitude better than when I was a kid, although the cost in poorer miles per gallon must be huge. You may recall that there used to be two different MPG ratings from the government on cars, one for California and one for the rest of the country, with the California one about, I don't know, one-tenth worse. Now, everybody has the California smog-fighting equipment on their cars, so that must increase our oil bill by many billions annually.

Lead -- Here's where one environmental improvement caused another improvement. The catalytic converter (invented by GM and given free to other car companies -- thanks, GM!) would be ruined by leaded gasoline, so unleaded gas was introduced.

Redwoods -- Saved by the Save the Redwoods League, co-founded by Madison Grant.

Pelicans -- Very rare at the beach when I was a kid, now plentiful due to ban on DDT, which makes eggshells brittle

Bald Eagles -- Not plentiful, but they're back. (This is one you occasionally hear about, because people like large vicious animals.)

You might think that environmentalists would promote an image for themselves that says, "Trust us. We fixed problems in the past and we know how to fix them now," but, instead, apocalypse and misanthropy seems to sell a lot better.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer