Saturday, August 31, 2024
Home Blog Page 473

Climate: The Rest of the Story Malhusians and Social Darwinists have hijaked the environment movement

por Steve Watson, Infowars.net

Turbinas de viento producen energía limpia y cuidan el medio ambienteWind turbines that produce clean energy

In order to fully grasp the magnitude of the ClimateGate scandal, one must understand what purpose the data massaging and blackballing of conflicting science has as part of a larger agenda to use an environmental crisis for social manipulation and control.

We have previously covered the origins of the environmental movement’s hijacking decades ago by luminaries such as Maurice Strong, via globalist groups such as The Club of Rome, who published blueprints for the use of a perceived environmental crisis as “a new enemy to untie” humanity.

Use of the perceived environmental crisis by special interests operates on two different levels. Firstly, it provides a pretext for controlling the living standards of the masses while acting as an engine for vast financial profitability for the controllers.

From so called “green police”, and children being encouraged to become “climate cops”, to the impending introduction of a global carbon tax, the solutions being offered to combat climate change only serve as forms of social control.

They do nothing to overturn or prevent changes in the Earth’s climate which we are incessantly told are threatening our continued existence on the planet.

Secondly, the perceived environmental threat is being used as a device to frame the concept of population control and even depopulation. Such ideas on the surface are clearly detestable and are associated with genocide and Nazi eugenics ideology.

However, a disturbing trend being set by several “green” groups is to associate climate change with over-population and suggest that the solution is to implement depopulation policies and punishments for those who fl out them.

From the teachings of “Dr Death” Eric Pianka, to German fi lm fest cartoons, to New York Times best selling books, we are being saturated with the idea that humanity itself must be culled in order to save mother earth.

Last year, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was reprimanded for portraying farmers and forestry workers as evil and telling children how much carbon they can produce before they die.

ABC’s Planet Slayer website featured a cartoon series, complete with a tool called “Prof Schpinkee’s Greenhouse Calculator” to help kids work out their carbon footprint.

The calculator also estimates at what age a person should die so they don’t use more than their fair share of the Earth’s resources. If users were found to have used too much CO2, they were portrayed as an exploding pig, leaving behind a pool of blood and gore. In 2007, a report published by green think tank the Optimum Population Trust announced that children are ‘bad for planet and ‘having large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul fl ights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags.

The same talking point has been re-iterated again and again by public policy groups and environmentalists, as well as the most infl uential scientists in the U.S. government.

Perhaps the most notorious to endorse the idea of depopulation is current White House science advisor John P. Holdren, who called for lowering global fertility by artificially medicating municipal water supplies in his 1977 book Ecoscience. Such chilling comments, and their enthusiastic reception underscore a long term agenda to enact horrifying measures of population control.

It is no coincidence that Holdren is also embroiled in the current ClimateGate emails scandal.

Since radical environmentalists are pushing to completely de-industrialize the world, reversing a trend that naturally lowers the amount of children people have, if climate change fanatics are allowed to implement their policies, global population will continue to increase and overpopulation will become a problem – another example of how the global warming hysterics are actually harming the long term environment of earth by preventing overpopulated countries from developing and naturally lowering their birth levels.

Of course, the globalist agenda to reduce world population by 80 percent, a fi gure achievable only via draconian and genocidal measures, has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with whittling down the number of slaves so that they can be more easily controlled on the plantation.

The eugenics movement never went away, it simply re-packaged itself to be more palatable to an increasingly skeptical public and its primary camouflage now fronts as the global warming doomsday cult.

­While you may think Ideas of sterilization and depopulation could never be accepted by the public, those very concepts are now being embraced and popularized by some as the way forward for humanity.

Alex Jones’ Films Endgame and Fall Of The Republic address the hijacking of the environmental movement by elite social Darwinists in more detail.

 

Male and female shopping styles are in our genes

by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich., – When men and women hit Kmart, the sex differences in shopping strategies illuminate like Blue Light Specials, and we can look to evolution for the answer.

Daniel Kruger, research faculty at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, says it’s perfectly natural that so many men can’t distinguish a sage from a beige sock or that just as many woman can’t tell if the shoe department is due North or West from the escalator. From an evolutionary perspective, it all harkens back to the skills that women use for gathering plant foods and the skills that men use for hunting meat. The contrast emerges because of the different foraging strategies for hunting and gathering used throughout human evolution.

Sex specific strategies can be seen in the modern consumer environment, according to Kruger’s new study, “Evolved foraging psychology underlies sex differences in shopping experiences and behaviors,” scheduled for the December issue of the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, & Cultural Psychology. The study examines shopping through the framework of evolutionary psychology to understand why so many more women enjoy spending a day picking through racks of clothes with friends, while most men can’t get out of the mall fast enough.

“We have evidence that the kind of skills, abilities, and behaviors that are important for hunting and gathering in current foraging societies emerge predictably in our modern consumer environment,” said Kruger, who decided to conduct the study after a winter holiday trip with friends across Eumillonesrope.

After exploring sleepy little villages and reaching Prague, the first thing the women wanted to do was shop, Kruger said, and the men couldn’t understand why.

“But that is not so unreasonable if you’re thinking about a gathering strategy,” Kruger said. “Anytime you come into a new area you want to scope out the landscape and find out where the food patches are.”

Kruger said that gathering edible plants and fungi is traditionally done by women. In modern terms, think of filling a basket by selecting one item at a time, he said. Women in foraging societies return to the same patches that yield previous successful harvests, and usually stay close to home and use landmarks as guides.

Foraging is a daily activity, often social and can Euinclude young children if necessary. When gathering, women must be very adept at choosing just the right color, texture, and smell to ensure food safety and quality. They also must time harvests, and know when a certain depleted patch will regenerate and yield good harvest again.

In modern terms, women are much more likely to know when a specific type of item will go on sale, for example, then men. Women also spend much more time choosing the perfect fabric, color, and texture.

Men on the other hand, often have a specific item in mind and want to get in, get it, and get out. It’s critical to get meat home as quickly as possible, Kruger said. Taking young children isn’t safe in a hunt and would likely hinder progress. Of course ­these behaviors aren’t genetically determined and don’t apply to everyone, but there are consistent broad themes, Kruger said.

So why is this important? “The value is in understanding each other,” Kruger said. “Both your own shopping strategy and the strategy of the complimentary sex. It helps demystify behaviors — guys, myself included, have been puzzled by why women shop the way they do.” And women can have a hard time understanding a man’s aversion to it, he said.

Morales wins landslide victory in Bolivia

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Evo MoralesEvo Morales

President Evo Morales and the ruling leftwing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) claimed on Dec. 6 an overwhelming re-election victory. Exit polls showed him beating his closest competitor, Manfred Reyes Villa of the right-wing Plan Progreso para Bolivia-Convergencia Nacional (PPB-CN) by 63 percent to 28 percent in the presidential election.

Samuel Doria Medina of the centre-right Unidad Nacional (UN) trailed in with 6 percent. Morales not only triumphed in the presidential vote but also in the legislative contest. As Morales said in his victory speech, this gives his new government a mandate to continue implementing the new constitution, promulgated in February this year, which enshrines indigenous rights and provides for greater state control of the economy.

Nicaraguan lawmakers resist re-election of prez

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) President Daniel Ortega’s attempt to run for re-election has run into a setback in congress.

Lawmakers are refusing to recognize a Supreme Court decision that would allow Ortega to run again in 2011 by overturning bans on consecutive re-election and serving more than two terms.

The National Assembly approved a resolution Thursday to oppose the top court’s decision. Legislators say it is up to Nicaragua’s electoral commission to choose which branch of government to heed.

The electoral commission’s president says the Supreme Court’s ruling is fi nal. But he leaves the post in 2010 and lawmakers are betting his replacement will side with them.

Ortega was fi rst named president after Sandinista rebels toppled dictator An-

astasio Somoza in 1979.

MERCOSUR economy, foreign ministers on sessions

Foreign and economy ministers of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR)’s member countries start debates Monday in this capital, prior to the 38th Summit of this organization, taking place Dec. 8 here.

Head of State Tabare Vazquez will deliver the pro tempore presidency to his Argentinean peer Cristina Fernandez, in the presence of Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo, effective members of the bloc.

The Uruguayan leadership gave priority in these six months of mandate to the economic, trade, institutional areas, and external, political and social relation.

Venezuelan statesman Hugo Chavez stated that he will travel today to Montevideo, to attend the Mercosur Summit, “despite Venezuela’s entry to that bloc has not been approved yet.”

­The Brazil model

Brazil’s spectacular recovery from the popping of the consumer boom in the US suggests that its economic policymakers have a better understanding of how to manage a major economy in the 21st Century than most of their neighbours. Elsewhere in the region, Chile also seems to be recovering well, while Bolivia and Uruguay have also weathered the storm.

Legitimacy of Lobo’s election in doubt as congress refuses to reinstate Zelaya

Two crucial votes took place in Honduras this week. The first, on Nov. 29, saw Pepe Lobo Sosa, the presidential candidate for the opposition Partido Nacional (PN), comfortably win election; the second, on Dec. 2, saw congress vote emphatically not to reinstate the ousted president Manuel Zelaya before Lobo’s investiture on 27 January. The second vote makes it very diffi cult for the majority of Latin American states and much of the international community to accept the legitimacy of the fi rst.

Conservative Zelaya foe wins Honduras presidency

­­

Record turnout brings optimism as tensions continue

by José de la Isla and Erick Galindo

Bomb threats, international calls for a boycott, and protests resoundingfrom Washington, D.C., to Honduras’ capital of Tegucigalpa did not deter more than 1.7 million voters from casting their ballots Nov. 29 to choose a new president.

Attracting 55% of the vote was Porfirio Lobo Sosa, or Pepe, as he is affectionately known in this tiny Central American republic.

He is a key member of its conservative National Party, the direct opposition to the Liberal Party of ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s Liberal Party.

In 2005, Lobo Sosa was runner-up to Zelaya. He became an adamant advocate to remove Zelaya from office. A wealthy farmer, Lobo Sosa had tallied 897,000 votes, with 62 percent of precincts reporting, 200,000 more than were cast for the Liberal Party’s Elvin Santos, who has conceded.

Officials said that 63% of the eligible population voted in spite of tension and violence that has engulfed Honduras since Zelaya was seized and flown out of the country in a June 28 coup.

Holed up at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since sneaking back into the country Sept. 21, Zelaya has challenged the reported high turnout numbers, saying that his people reported less than half of registered voters cast ballots. He also denied reports that he is seeking political asylum in Nicaragua or anywhere else.

Analysts in both political camps do not expect the protests and violence to stop as a result of the election, but the large turnout has brought some optimism to a country that has suffered from economic sanctions, tourism downturns and numerous bouts of violence in the past five months.

In Washington, D.C., cultural anthropologist Adrienne Pine, author of “Work Hard, Drink Hard. On Violence and Survival in Honduras,” told Weekly Report that the likelihood of the election being fair was slim.

“The country’s conditions are anything but free and fair right now,” said Pine, an American University professor who spent more than 10 years in Honduras. “The human rights violations are atrocious and the same military that has carried out over 4,000 human rights violations is responsible for protecting the elections.”

Pine represents a group of voices that claim anything short of Zelaya’s reinstatement would be a blow to democracy in the region. Zelaya’s term would have expired this year. He was charged by foes with planning to change a constitutional limitation to allow him to run for reelection.

The Organization of American States and most countries in the hemisphere, with the notable exception of the United States, have vowed not to recognize the election.

After the de facto Honduran government agreed to post-election concessions, the U.S. reversed its stance, with State Department officials telling reporters that another four years of opposing the Honduran government was an unwise choice.

Now Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica are indicating their support for the next government in hopes of ending the political crisis. The OAS’s refusal to monitor the elections left the U.S. State Department scrambling to send its own monitors, impeding the Obama Administration’s path toward improving relations with Latin America. The Center for Democracy in the Americas criticized the U.S. reversal of policy and said in a statement that it would only serve to slow negotiations for peace in the region.

­In his victory speech, President-elect Lobo Sosa emphasized peace and international relations as primary goals . Runner-up Santos also called for peace and unity of the Honduran people. Hispanic Link.

 

Some varooooom for education

por José de la Isla

(Tercera de una serie de cinco partes sobre la educación)

HOUSTON – After trying for laughs in Hollywood nightclubs, game shows and the Latino comedy TV circuit, comedian Ernie G. got a chance to make some staid business and government types chuckle at a National Council of La Raza conference a few years ago. He told them how he got to college. His message: “Nowadays, you got to go to college, especially if you want a nice ride.” Today, it’s a TV spot for community college recruiting.

Addressing present realities is the antidote to decades of scary policy papers forecasting economic doom and decrying student attitudes. Glum talk is virtually a light industry in education circles. Yet rarely has anyone come up with a comprehensive plan to do what’s needed.

Rarely. That is until Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.

Unlike other policy reports, its focus is not a complaint and half-measures, as if Archie Bunker headed a think-tank. Instead, it lays out a scenario about how to make things right.

For instance, unlike a number of countries, ours does not assume students are college-ready at 16. “So let’s start out assuming that we can match or even exceed their performance,” this report says. And it outlines a redesign plotting how that can be done.

The report is not a prescription for stumbling around reinventing students. Rather, it redesigns the system so it has the look and feel of the future.

The commission came up with its prescription by working its way back from the goal, as smooth as a Michael Jackson moonwalk, with an eye to how 95 percent of students can meet, without remediation, community college entrance standards.

Some people can show the aptitude for college-level work at 16 through an exam. Those who don’t can have another chance (or as many as they need) to become college eligible. Those who take the community-college avenue conceivably can begin their four-year college work later at the junior level. (Details about the redesign can be found at www.skillscommission.org/executive.htm).

Defenders of the current system will say that some school districts already have something like it and have a hissy fit insisting this is no magic bullet.

The report has ten steps, each worthy of consideration for implementation. These can save $60 billion because the new system virtually eliminates dropouts, redundancy, and ineffectiveness. The savings can be redeployed to recruit and train a new teaching force, coming from the top third of high-school students going to college, high-quality early childhood education, and providing disadvantaged students with neededresources to meet international standards.

Teachers would be very well paid. In return they would meet rigorous new teacher licensing by the state. Hired by districts, they would be encouraged to form professional organizations the way law, architecture and doctor partnerships work to provide their services.

The old system of education, intended for a disappearing industrial economy, required relatively low-level literacy to do mechanical, often repetitive, work. But the science and math information age is a natural world niche for the United States, producing high-quality goods and services that result from highly educated workers, who are trained for creativity and innovation.

From the point of view of those who want to stay in the 19th century’s little red school house, here’s the rub. The system of school districts becomes that of writing performance contracts with independent “contract schools” funded by the state, monitoring them, and assuring they meet performance standards. The new schools could be operated by teacher colleges, for-profit and non-profit organizations, and teacher collaboratives.

Apologists ran out of gas long ago tinkering with the old system’s carburetor and incremental changes. The engine stalled out, especially with so-called “minority” students in low-performing schools who are becoming the new majorities. The small gains made during the past decade have slowed. The old system is the wrong vehicle for our times.

That’s why it makes sense that comedian Ernie G. would link going to college with a nice ride. Now a commission has provided an interesting vehicle for getting there.

(Part three of a fi ve-part series on education) Next Week: Why consensus is forming for education redesign and what it should look like.

[José de la Isla is a former assistant professor of education at the University of Oregon. His latest digital book, sponsored by The Ford Foundation, is available free at www.DayNightLifeDeathHope.com. He writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link News Service and is author of The Rise of Hispanic Political Power (2003). E-mail him at ­joseisla3@yahoo.com.]

A little bit about our legal system and how is it that we function

by Marvin J. Ramirez

­Marvin  J. RamírezMarv­in J. Ramír­ez­­­­­­

This is the second part of a series of several articles that I will comment on regarding the current corruption of our political system, which works for the corrupt banking elite a­nd against North American people. The following is a reproduction from the article.

— The Powers, knew that all Commerce is ruled by the Law of Contracts (better known as the UCC Law).

Where there is no Contract there is no case. The teaching began in school that any Contract you signed is a Valid Contract and that you must fulfill it. This is a good saying as long as it is between two living souls, with all the contract revealed for both parties, and the signatures of both parties thereto. The heretical saying, “Good Credit is the most important thing that you have”.

A Valid Contract has four parts: (1) Offer, (2) Consideration, (3) Acceptance, (4) The signatures by all parties for the Contract-Only the parties that have signed the Contract can enforce fulfilling the Contract.

Without the consent by both parties, a Lawyer cannot settle any dispute that may arise from a Lawful Contract.

Our Creator created man. The Creator gave man the right to forming Government. Man gave government the right for forming CORPORATIONS. As man has no right nor the ability for ruling his Creator, the government has no right or the ability for ruling its creator. An illusion is used by the DEMOCRACY.

CORPORATE GOVERNMENT gave man a CORPORATE NAME and made him a Legal Fiction by writing his name in all CAPITAL LETTERS with the middle NAME only an initial. The proper name for a living soul is written in upper and lower case letters, the first and middle name being the Sovereign name and the last name is the family name. The real name for a living soul is I, Me, My, or Myself.

Government being a creation of mankind is only a piece of paper. As the government, being a piece of paper, could only create a CORPORATION, which in itself is only a piece of paper; neither being able to sign a lawful contract with a living soul. As all governments are CORPORATIONS themselves, they do not have the ability to sign a lawful contract, for whomever would be so brave, make themselves liable for the execution of the Contract, thereby losing their limited liability to prosecution for breach of Contract.

All CORPORATIONS then must have someone to speak for them, and the government came up with their own solution, The Lawyer, who has been appointed to speak for all Corporations in the Courts they have created. (Next week or the following, I will continue this article, which as it did to me, will teach you some secrets about our legal system. You do not have to be a lawyer to know about the law, which has been monopolized by these esquires.­

Life and death during the Great Depression: U-M Study

by the University of Michigan

It is now that all the community must show the love to his neighbor. The people of El Salvador need your help after having being: flogged by intense hurricane-force rains not seen in more than a decade. They have left mourning, thousands of homeless and destruction in the Central American region, but maily in El Salvador. To help, call 510-472-5138.“Muerte y destrucción por desastre natural en comunidades pobres de El Salvador”: It is now that all the community must show the love to his neighbor. The people of El Salvador need your help after having being flogged by intense hurricane-force rains not seen in more than a decade. They have left mourning, thousands of homeless and destruction in the Central American region, but maily in El Salvador. To help, call 510-472-5138..

ANN ARBOR, Michigan.— The Great Depression had a silver lining: During that hard time, U.S. life expectancy actually increased by 6.2 years, according to a University of Michigan study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Life expectancy rose from 57.1 in 1929 to 63.3 years in 1932, according to the analysis by U-M researchers José A. Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux. The increase occurred for both men and women, and for whites and non-whites.

“The finding is strong and counterintuitive,” says Tapia Granados, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “Most people assume that periods of high unemployment are harmful to health.”

For the study, the researchers used historical life expectancy and mortality data to examine associations between economic growth and population health for the period between 1920 and 1940. They found that while population health generally improved during the four years of the Great Depression and during recessions in 1921 and 1938, mortality increased and life expectancy declined during periods of strong economic expansion, such as 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1936-1937.

The researchers analyzed age-specific mortality rates and rates due to six causes of death that composed about two-thirds of total mortality in the 1930s: cardiovascular and renal diseases, cancer, influenza and pneumonia, tuberculosis, motor vehicle traffic injuries, and suicide. The association between improving health and economic slowdowns was true for all ages, and for every major cause of death except one: suicide. Although the research did not include analyses of possible causes for the pattern, Tapia Granados and Diez Roux offer some possible explanations about why population health tends to improve during recessions but not expansions.

“Working conditions are very different during expansions and recessions,” says Tapia Granados. “During expansions, firms are very busy, and they typically demand a lot of effort from employees, who are required to work a lot of overtime, and to work at a fast pace. This can create stress, which is associated with more drinking and smoking. Also, new workers may be hired who are inexperienced, so injuries are likely to be more common. And people who are working a lot may also sleep less which is known to have implications for health. Other health-related behaviors such as diet may also change for the worse during expansions.”

In recessions, Tapia Granados notes, there is less work to do, so employees can work at a slower pace. There is more time to sleep, and because people have less money, they are less likely to spend as much on alcohol and tobacco.

In addition, economic expansions are also associated with increases in atmospheric pollution which has well-documented short-term effects on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality. Other reasons that periods of economic expansion may be bad for health could include increases in social isolation and decreases in social support that typically occur when people are working more.

The researchers noted that their study examined the relation between recessions and mortality for the population as a whole, and not the effect of becoming unemployed on an individual person. In fact, their results show that downturns in economic activity may have overall beneficial effects on the population, even if becoming unemployed has adverse health consequences for a given person. “Social science is not physics,” says Tapia Granados. “But regularities in the past allow us at least some confidence in forecasting the future. Historical experience tells us that no particular deterioration of mortality is to be expected as a consequence of a recession beyond an increase in suicides which, although clearly important, is of small magnitude compared to the reduced number of fatalities from other causes.

­Other studies suggest that the relationship between population health and business cycles may be weakening, at least in the U.S. and in Japan, where the phenomenon of karoshi – sudden death from overwork among Japanese salarymen – dramatically illustrates the dangers of life in economic boom times.

Still, Tapia Granados hopes that a better understanding of the beneficial effects of recessions on health may perhaps contribute to the development of economic policies that enhance health and minimize or buffer adverse impacts of economic expansions. And he cautions that the findings also suggest that suicide prevention services – often the casualties of budget cuts during economic downturns – are more important during bad times than ever.

Obama’s new multilateralism founders

­

­by the El Reportero’s news services

Barak ObamaBarak Obama

The first deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Craig Kelly, travelled to Tegucigalpa and met the de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, and the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya on Nov. 10.

Kelly, like the Organization of American States (OAS), is pushing Micheletti and the Honduran congress to adhere to the terms of the US-brokered Tegucigalpa-San José agreement, which contemplates the establishment of a national unity government, a congressional vote on Zelaya’s restitution (taking into account the ‘opinion’ of the supreme court), along with full international recognition of the scheduled Nov. 29 general elections.

The US has made it patently clear that it is firmly focused on the scheduled elections as the definitive way out of this nearly five-month old crisis, with Zelaya’s position now secondary. That, however, has removed all incentives for the de facto administration and the other Honduran institutions to act in good faith.

As U.S.-Colombia bases deal is signed, Lula calls for all-round transparencyThe agreement granting the US additional base facilities in Colombia has been signed. Details have yet to be disclosed, but off-1the-record briefings suggest that the content does not vary much from what the US State Department anticipated in August [SSR-09-08]. Prior to the signing of the deal, Colombian and US diplomacy got Brazil to signal that it would not oppose the agreement in the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) if all parties agree to transparency. Meanwhile Venezuela and its allies continued to depict the deal as a threat.­

Election results described as mixed bag for Latinos

by Marcelo Ballve

New America Media — Viewed through the lens of the immigration issue, the overall results of the Nov. 3 elections might be called a mixed bag.

Republican gubernatorial candidates who promised more hardline immigration stances won races in Virginia and New Jersey, but a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in New York’s 23rd District was picked up by Democrats. This should make it a bit easier for House Democrats to marshal the votes needed to advance on comprehensive immigration reform, which they promised to do before the end of this year.

Earlier this autumn, 100 House Democrats sent a letter to President Obama reaffirming their commitment to push immigration reform legislation forward. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-III.) has said he will introduce an immigration bill as early as this month.

Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) has warned immigration reform needs to happen by early next year,well ahead of Nov. 2010 mid-term elections if it is to succeed.

Here’s how they may impact immigration policy, at the state or federal level.

In California’s 10th District, east of the San Francisco Bay, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a progressive Democrat, won a contested open seat with 53% of the vote, beating Republican John Harmer.

In upstate New York’s 23rd District, retired Air Force Capt. Bill Owens, a Democrat, beat Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, who had attracted the support of right-wing talk radio and cabie news hosts, and managed to push the Republican Party candidate out of the race.

These two Democratic victories modestly aided the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to political blogger/author Matthew Yglesias. Nancy Pelosi had an easier time rounding up enough votes for a health care bill, for example, and “each and every Blue Dog (conservative) Democrat has his or her individual leverage over the process reduced.”

What Yglesias writes also applies for an immigration bill. Blue Dogs will have less leverage over the shape of any immigration bill, and Pelosi, as House Majority Leader, will have a marginally easier time culling the votes needed for any immigration legisletion to pass.

THERE’S POLITICAL RISK

Republican Chris Christie’s election as New Jersey governor over incumbent Jon Corzine mey slow down or kill efforts underway to grant undocumented immigrant students the right to access in-state tuition at New Jersey colleges.

Christie said he is opposed to the plan. Christie may also prove more sympathetic to local elected officials and law enforcement chiefs in New Jersey who want to contract with the Department of Homeland Security to carry out immigration enforcement actions normally undertaken by federal agents. The delegation of immigration enforcement to state and local cops is part of a federal program known as 287g, which is controversial in the Latino community. Republican Bob McDonnell, elected governor in Virginia, has proposed that the 287g program be extended statewide so that Virginia state troopers can carry out immigration enforcement actions. His opponent Creigh Deeds opposed thet proposal.

If McDonnell pushes ahead with foisting new immigration responsibilities on Virginia state troopers, the move will come with its portion of political risk. The 287g program is popular with many voters who argue it helps speed the deportation of undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.

Critics of the program say it diverts law enforcement resources away from primary crime-fi ghting tasks and sows distrust between Latino communities end law offi cers. Immigrant and Latino activists also say 287g leads to racial profi ling.

Despite his tough stance on illegal immigration, Mc-Donnell went out of his way to attract Latino votes.

McDonnell faced an uphill battle, since two-thirds of Virginia Latino voters helped President Obama to his surprise win in the state last year, according to Jennifer Rubin writing in Commentary.

‘A GOOD LISTENER’ Still, while campaigning, McDonnell strove to appear anti-illegal immigration Instead of anti-immigrant.

Sergio Rodriguera Jr., a Latino Republican activist, was quoted in Rubin’s article, saying McDonnell hes been a good listener, and his Hispanic-outreach events have not been token events with chips and salsa. He understands that Hispanics want to live the American dream of building a small business and owning their own home.

­It will be interesting to look at Virginia’s election returns and see how many Latinos voted for McDonnell. If many did, then McDonnell might indeed be regarded as an exemple to conservetive Republicens who want to attract Latino support in 2010 and beyond (as Rubin argues in her article).

But, if McDonnell pushes aheed with his plan to extend 287g statewide and appear tough-as-nails on illegal immigration, he will have to walk a fi ne line or risk alienating any Latino voters he managed to attract to his candidacy.

The economic recovery next door

by Rob Paral

Looking for a low-cost solution to many of our most intractable problems in the United States? Maybe you’d like to see urban neighborhoods prosper, and watch the working poor find better jobs, buy homes and invest in their own education? On top of all that, just maybe you’d like to see those benefits spread across society by breaking barriers that separate the haves and the have-nots. Interested?

It’s cheaper than you realize, faster than you know, better than you’d expect and – here’s the kicker – we know how to do it because we’ve done it before.

It’s called L-E-G-A-L-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N. Not hard to spell, pronounce or remember, and it should flow trippingly from the tongue when someone asks you for ways to improve the economy.

Before I do the numbers, as they say, let’s go over the basics of why the U.S. economy should benefit from the legalization of undocumented immigrants. The immigrants themselves would find better jobs, have access to credit, lending and saving, and finally obtain professional licenses now denied to them in many locales. They will take off economically.

The general public doorshares in the prosperity, getting more taxpayers, more business creation, and a leveled playing field with no one working for artificially low wages. Along with that, the nagging fact of life – social disparities between rich and poor – should ease somewhat when we all play on the same field.

If only we could demonstrate these things with numbers it would be so helpful.

As it turns out, we can.

Using data representing immigrants who went through the legalization program of the late 1980s and early 1990s, my colleagues and I asked the question of whether the legalized immigrants improved their own economic situation and whether they began to catch up with the rest of society.

Our research – published recently by the American Immigration Council – suggests strongly that legalized immigrants lowered their poverty rate, raised their wages and purchased homes in a remarkable way.

For example: groups with poverty rates nearing 30 percent saw their poverty level fall by half. Their hourly wages rose by 70 percent. Their home ownership rate almost quintupled.

Much of the legalized immigrants’ progress seems to have come with the added benefit of narrowing at least some of the gap between them and the rest of society. The immigrants’ poverty rate edged much closer to that of the general population. Their property ownership level made them almost indistinguishable from the rest of us.

­So while our nation’s economic mandarins seek ways to turn the U.S. economy around, let’s begin talking about immigration reform as a way to contribute toward that goal. As economist Sherrie Kossoudji of the University of Michigan says, noting the price that undocumented families pay for their lack of legal status, “legalization would be the cheapest federal workforce development and anti-poverty program for children in history.”

It’s time to use findings such as these to reframe the discussion on undocumented immigration. The twelve million are not a problem but a potential. Immigration reform isn’t something you do in spite of the economy; it’s something you do for the economy.

(Rob Paral is Principal of Rob Paral and Associates, a consulting firm in Chicago. He is also a Fellow with the American Immigration Council in Washington, D.C., and the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame.) © Hispanic Link News Service