June 2009
All Local, All the Time
One of the talk-radio stations here in Rockford bills itself as “All Local. All Day.” It is an interesting slogan, in light of increasing reports of the impending failure of local media; it would be even more interesting if it (or a version of it) were not used by hundreds of other talk-radio stations across the United States. The station managers and staff may have the best of intentions, but most of these stations are also part of a national (or regional) chain of media outlets, and the “All Local” format is most often a business decision made in a boardroom far from the studio where it must be turned into reality.
Bailing Out the Bucket Shops
Since September 2008 an awful lot of Americans have lost 40 to 50 percent of their net worth. According to Bloomberg News, the federal government, during the same period, has committed $11.3 trillion in loans, guarantees, and investments to bail out the financial system. The Obama administration believes this effort will help the overall economy and save jobs. The problem, however, is that it is impossible to show that this vast effort will actually help the economy. The downside is clear, but the upside is not. MIT economics professor Simon Johnson believes what we are facing could “be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big.” Almost all countries are showing “a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances.”
Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton, R.I.P.
When Popcorn Sutton died in mid-March at the age of 62, the national press ran obituaries. Though he was just an old moonshiner who’d plied his trade for half a century and done nothing else of consequence, a whole bunch of folks in Tennessee and North Carolina grieved more than they would have over the death of a military hero, movie star, or ex-president. A few lamented the disappearance of the best 180-proof whiskey available on planet Earth. More mourned the loss of a dogged warrior who’d fought the enemy’s merciless legions, held them at bay for nearly a lifetime, and finally yielded to overwhelming numbers and resources.
The Cost of Immigration—June 2009
PERSPECTIVE
Immigration, Neighbors, and Enemies
by Thomas Fleming
VIEWS
The Economic Impact of Immigration
by Peter Brimelow
Paying for the Privilege.
You Should Have Been Here Yesteryear
by Roger D. McGrath
When the Golden State was paradise.
California Crash
by John C. Seiler, Jr.
The Golden State today.
Mandating Failure
by Edwin S. Rubenstein
Federal insistence on multilingualism.
Immigration, Neighbors, and Enemies
It is like a science-fiction movie from the 1950’s. Mysterious radiation from outer space takes over the brains of Asian men in America, turning them into moral zombies that go on killing sprees: a Buddhist in Texas who tried to beat the demons out of his three-year-old son who had eaten meat; a discharged IBM employee who shot up an immigrant hospitality center in Binghamton, New York; the Vietnamese father in Mobile who threw his three children off a bridge. Simultaneously, from the South, comes an invading force of violent aliens importing toxins that destroy the souls of those who ingest them. And all across the country the familiar cry goes up, “Nothing can stop them!”
The Economic Impact of Immigration: Paying for the Privilege
I stopped paying attention to Time many years ago. My twin brother and I, already plotting our emigration to the United States, subscribed as college students in England in the 1960’s to get some sense of this world-straddling “indispensable nation”—as Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later called it, possibly not for our reasons—and also because our English liberal professors assured us it was written by “Cold Warriors.”
Webstore Features
Scott P. Richert's Catholicism GuideSite @ About.com
