From: Latinovations

As the highest-ranking female member on the House Armed Services Committee, I have the opportunity to see first-hand the significant contributions of our women in uniform. Women of all races and ages have served in every military conflict since the Revolutionary War, including our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But despite their many accomplishments, female servicemembers are not always recognized for their role on the battlefield. Nor do they always receive the tools they need to serve safely and effectively in combat.
I recently had the opportunity to lead an all-female Congressional Delegation to Afghanistan. The primary purpose of our trip was two-fold: to see how women in combat are adapting to their increasing role, and to view the situation in Afghanistan from a woman’s perspective. In addition to meeting with top military officials, including General McChrystal, my colleagues and I were able to visit with female servicemembers to learn about some the unique challenges still facing women in combat.
There are currently over 29,000 women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet they continue to encounter barriers not experienced by their male counterparts. Female servicemembers are less likely to be promoted to leadership positions, less likely to receive vital combat training (even though they de facto serve on the front lines), and less likely to have access to women doctors or female-oriented care. But one thing they are more likely to experience is sexual assault or abuse while serving in the Armed Forces.
Last year, the Department of Defense reported a 7.6% increase in the number of sexual assault cases involving military personnel. Part of this increase is accounted for by an increase in the number of victims willing to report their assaults and greater transparency in military reporting procedures. But the underlying issue of sexual assault continues to exist, and female servicemembers continue to be the majority of victims.
When I spoke to women, including Latinas, on the ground in Afghanistan, they said the military has taken significant steps to prevent and prosecute assaults. This is, of course, encouraging. But the reality is that women continue to serve in a military environment that is not always welcoming and is, at times, outright misogynistic. That’s why counselors and rape kits are now common in war zones, and why there is still only one female four-star general in the entire military.
One of my top priorities in Congress has been working with our military leaders to create an inclusive environment for all our women in uniform. In 2005, I successfully revised the Uniform Code of Military Justice to include a meaningful sexual assault statute that better protects victims and empowers prosecutors. And more recently, in the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act, my HASC colleagues and I were able to include a provision to create a sexual assault database, which will document reported cases of assault across the services and encourage greater accountability in each military branch.
Moving forward, we have to continue to expand opportunities for female servicemembers of all races and combat discrimination in all its forms. Sexual abuse and other acts of misogyny violate the core principals of our Armed Forces. The challenges facing female servicemembers – obstacles to promotion, discrimination, and sexual assault – are challenges that affect the strength and integrity of our entire military. Congress and our military leaders must work harder, together, to create a military environment that encourages and supports the women soldiers who serve this country.

Congresswoman Sanchez serves as Vice Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and is the ranking female member on the House Armed Services Committee. She is a recognized leader on national security, intelligence, and counterterrorism issues and is committed to preparing our Armed Forces for a new generation of security challenges. Rep. Sanchez is also a member of the Blue Dog Democrats, the New Democratic Coalition, and the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. In 2005, Congresswoman Sanchez was appointed by Speaker Pelosi to serve on the Joint Economic Committee (JEC), a bicameral Congressional Committee that continually monitors matters relating to the U.S. economy, including unemployment and foreclosures

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: The Huffington Post

Last week, nearly 350 advocates from Latino organizations affiliated with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), descended on Capitol Hill and conducted Congressional visits with a clear message: the time for immigration reform is now, and those who obstruct progress or sit on the sidelines will be held accountable. NCLR also unveiled a one-minute video in English and Spanish reminding President Obama, in his own words, of his campaign promise to rise above fear and demagoguery and restore order and dignity to the nation’s broken immigration system. The videos are circulating online, through NCLR’s network of Latino community organizations, and with multiple other partners. Many of the people who came to meet with their members of Congress will be returning to DC on March 21 to join in the March for America to take a stand for all of America’s workers, families, and communities across the country.

Last Friday, the Associated Press reported that President Obama will meet on Monday with Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and is “looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill,” according to White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro.

But let’s be clear. If the meeting is just to “hear more,” it’s not going to cut it. The president had a meeting with Republican and Democratic members of both chambers in June 2009, and in August held a White House summit, hosted by Secretary Janet Napolitano, with a large number of representatives from faith, labor, business, law enforcement, immigrant, ethnic, and civil rights groups. Around that time, Schumer and Graham started working on a bipartisan proposal, and Schumer announced he would have the parameters of a proposal ready by Labor Day 2009.

With the Congressional legislative runway getting crowded and time running out before the November elections, it is time to land this plane. Monday’s meeting must be followed by a clear, bipartisan proposal and a firm timeline for Senate action. Anything less will be regarded as more stalling by the tens of thousands coming to DC to march in two weeks.

During their Congressional visits last week, community leaders often heard “we are open to consider a reform proposal” from Congress members on both side of the aisle. Well, it’s time to stand up and be counted. The country has waited over 20 years for a solution, and those who sit on the sidelines waiting for others to lead will be just as complicit as those who actively obstruct its progress. Immigration reform can help strengthen our economy and the labor rights of all working people, bring stability back to our communities, and quell the rise of hate groups and extremism we are witnessing across the country. From a policy, political, and moral perspective, it’s time to act.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: Caivan.org

In examining immigration policy, those interested in the topic are apt to first look to traditional, English speaking media covering the matter. For Californians, this means reading the LA Times, The Daily News, The Sac Bee, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.

In becoming preoccupied with English speaking outlets, the immigration issue from the “other perspective” gets shoved into a blind spot. A disclaimer: This isn’t a call to put on the suit of multiculturalism or to adopt the “other perspective” as one’s own.

Instead, it’s essentially a call similar to the wise maxim for watching cable political pundits: Consider more than one perspective to see an argument from the big picture. Looking to only one perspective risks turning one into a mindless, partisan cheerleader.

To be aware of what the other side has to say about current immigration issues aids in more effectively assessing the immigration situation. In this awareness, there’s still a need to read with a critical eye, considering whether certain concerns are fair ones.

In a fascinating angle of examining immigration, the Hispanic community voice raises a legitimate concern. Namely, it notes that both parties are solidly out of touch with proposing a solution to the immigration problem.

The Hispanic publication La Opinion recently reported about the split within the Republican Party over immigration reform. Steve Poizner, running for the gubernatorial nomination against Meg Whitman, takes a hard stance on the immigration issue. Poizner, according to La Opinion, said that “illegal immigrants are overwhelming our education, health care and public benefits systems.” Meanwhile, his counterpart, Whitman, advocates a more moderate approach to immigration reform, according to the same publication.

The implication is that the Republican Party lacks consensus on immigration reform, a more than accurate assessment highlighted at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). This lack of consensus in the Republican Party is certainly a factor continuing to plague it, despite an effort by conservatives to push more Hispanic conservative candidates.

As much as the the Hispanic community gives grief to Republicans for lack of vision, Democrats aren’t exempted from Hispanic ire. The liberal organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLA), called out President Obama for his unkept promise to implement immigration reform in a timely manner.

NCLA recently released a video of President Obama addressing a Hispanic crowd earlier last year, showering them with immigration reform promises. Agree or disagree with NCLA in terms of their ultimate vision for an immigration reform bill, they too make an overall valid criticism of current political party structure.

Their point? Democratic leadership has labeled itself as the party of minorities and of diversity. But when it comes to actually delivering the goods, there are more politically expedient measures to focus on (i.e. Healthcare reform). It’s actually worse to promise something and not deliver it. It ultimately begs the question, do the Democratic elites really care for minorities?

The biggest implication is that both parties seem to be out of touch with minorities, being more concerned with pandering to their base and courting special interest money. In a sense, independents and Hispanics share a commonality. Both parties are ignoring their concerns and needs.

This isn’t necessarily a call for instituting a third party, but a call for a better class of candidates to come forward in future elections. Citizens need candidates who are actually interested in the well-being of their constituents and in making the American dream available to those willing to work within the system in a fair manner.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: Ponte Al Dia

They’re being sold on why the merger of the biggest cable TV and residential broadband company in our country with one of the largest television networks and programmers allegedly would be good for the Latino community and the public interest.

The merger would give Comcast unprecedented control over the commanding heights of our nation’s media system. If allowed to go forward, Comcast would own the broadcast networks of NBC and Telemundo, part of at least 30 cable networks, eight regional sports networks, more than two dozen local NBC and Telemundo TV stations and a movie studio.

If this takeover goes through, the control that Comcast would exert over our TV and Internet experiences will be considerable. We can expect cable rates - which already have increased three times the rate of inflation since 1996 - to spike even higher. We can be sure it will be even harder for independent and diverse programming to find a spot in the cable lineup. And we know mergers almost always mean job cuts.

And let’s not kid ourselves. If this merger is rubber-stamped, it won’t be long before we see another wave of mergers among companies like Verizon, AT&T, CBS and Disney. That’s what always happens, even though these deals historically have been disastrous for consumers - and especially for people of color.

Historically, that’s why leading Latino organizations have been very skeptical of runaway media consolidation. When NBC announced its plan to buy Telemundo in 2001, many of our nation’s leading Latino groups opposed the transaction. They urged the FCC to reject the deal, claiming it wouldn’t serve the public interest or promote diversity.

But now that Comcast wants to buy NBC - which includes the Telemundo network - it will make this deal one of the most consequential media mergers in our nation’s history. But Latino civil rights groups have been strangely silent.

A decade ago, NBC made all sorts of promises about how the Telemundo deal would benefit local communities - and then it reneged on them. For starters, it cut the local Telemundo newscast in 2006 in major cities like Dallas, Houston, San Jose and San Antonio after promising to compete against Univision.

It also stated that the deal would “benefit NBC’s English-only audience by creating new possibilities for the cross-fertilization of ideas and viewpoints.” But those benefits never materialized.

Comcast, too, has a long record of making promises it doesn’t keep. For example, after promising to respect collective bargaining deals, it has turned around and busted the unions of companies it has taken over. That’s cold comfort for the union workers at NBC and Telemundo.

And we can’t overlook the programming. During a congressional hearing on Feb. 24, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) lambasted NBC for the misogynistic and homophobic programming that airs on Telemundo, and he criticized Comcast for not having a single Latino board member.

In that same hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) ripped Comcast for only having one African-American on its board, and took NBC to task for having only one African American and no Latinos among its top executives. Maybe that’s why there’s no black- or Latino-oriented programming on the network.

Comcast wants Congress to believe its’ bad actions are all in the past. But even in sworn testimony to Congress, the company is talking out of both sides of its mouth.

Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts promised Congress his company would abide by a series of self-imposed “public interest” concessions. But the list of promises they’ve offered is just a bunch of things they’re already doing, things they were already planning to do, or things they’re required to do by law.

It should be noted that Comcast has given generously to support the work of many leading Latino groups. But this does not justify or rectify the damage this merger would cause for consumers, for the public and for our community.

Comcast wants help from Latino groups to push through this mega-deal. But before offering their stamp of approval, we hope Latino leaders will ask some important questions: Will the merger increase cable prices? Will Comcast try to reject labor agreements? Will the merger increase the representation of Latinos on network and cable programming? Will it result in greater Latino ownership of broadcast stations and cable networks? Or will it increase the barriers to ownership?

Will Comcast make sure the open Internet stays that way so that small business can prosper and independent voices can be heard, even though it is in court trying to strip the FCC of its authority to protect an open Internet? Will we be better able to speak for ourselves or will this deal just create an even bigger gatekeeper?

Comcast and NBC Universal will undoubtedly make all sorts of promises about how Latinos would benefit from this massive merger. But they don’t have a believable answer for how this merger will actually benefit our community.

That’s because it won’t.

Felix Sanchez is the chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts and Chief Executive Officer of TerraCom, a government and public relations firm. Sanchez does not represent nor is receiving direct or indirect compensation to take a position on the merger.

Joseph Torres is the government relations manager for Free Press and former deputy director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Free Press is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that does not accept money from businesses, the government or political parties.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: PE.com

When Phil Velez was growing up in Pico Rivera, his school was overwhelmingly Latino, but almost every Cub Scout and Boy Scout was white.

“We just thought it wasn’t for us,” Velez said. “There’s still an image of the scouts as a middle-class, white organization.”

Velez, 33, now an Inland scouting official, is part of a new effort by the Boy Scouts of America to change that perception. The organization has created a Hispanic Initiatives program that aims to double the number of Latino Scouts by the end of 2010, the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.

Only 130,000 — or 4 percent — of the 2.9 million Scouts are Latino, said Marcos Nava, national director of Hispanic Initiatives. That’s up from 100,000 since early 2008, when the program began. The goal is 200,000 by the end of the year, Nava said.

For regions like the Inland area, the Latino outreach is a matter of survival. Nearly 60 percent of public school students are Latino, and that number is expected to rise. About 20 percent of Inland Scout parents who responded to a question on ethnicity identified their children as Hispanic.

The program faces challenges, including language barriers, the resemblance of Boy Scout uniforms to those of the Border Patrol’s, a shortage of Latino Scout employees and a lack of knowledge about Scouting.

Although the Scouts are an iconic institution in many suburban white, middle-class communities, the Boy Scouts are virtually unknown among some Latinos, especially immigrants.

“We have to do a better job of telling our story and telling people what Scouting is all about,” said Joseph Daniszewski, CEO of the California Inland Empire Council of the Boy Scouts. “We can’t assume that everyone knows what scouting is.”

Yolanda Bocanegra, 43, immigrated from Mexico a quarter century ago, but the Colton woman never knew about scouting until a few years ago, when she heard a police officer mention it on Spanish-language radio as a good way to keep kids out of trouble. Bocanegra later enrolled son Daniel, now 9, in Cub Scouts.

“I like it because they teach them good things, and they learn discipline,” Bocanegra said in Spanish.

Daniel said he enjoys Scouting because it’s fun.

“It’s really good,” Daniel said. “We’ve done all these activities: camping, archery, fishing, BB guns, rock-climbing, swimming, horseback riding.”

Bocanegra often accompanies her son to Scout meetings. She said she’d be lost if Leno Moreno, the leader of her son’s scout pack, didn’t translate parts of the meetings into Spanish.

Moreno, 40, is the type of scoutmaster whom the organization desperately needs: Latino, bilingual and well-respected in his community. Moreno persuaded friend Tammy Tabera to enroll her son Thomas, 7, in the Scouts, despite initial reservations. She said Scout leaders in the West Texas town where she grew up didn’t want Latino kids.

“To me, it was geared toward rich, white kids,” said Tabera, 32, of Colton. “They were the only ones they went after.”

Tabera wondered whether Scouting would be too expensive. Moreno tries to reduce costs by requiring the purchase only of a Scout shirt, rather than a full uniform, and not mandating hiking shoes, vests, hats and other items that can quickly add up to a few hundred dollars.

“If they can’t afford the shirt and the (Boy Scout) book, we’ll buy it for them,” he said.

The money comes from local fundraisers and from the ScoutReach program, which aims to recruit scouts from groups that have traditionally not been involved with Scouting in large numbers, including the Latino, black, Asian and low-income communities.

Velez heads ScoutReach for the Inland council. He said previous efforts to recruit Hispanic Scouts faltered in part because few of those doing the outreach were Latino.

“There’s an instant rapport between the individual delivering the message and the individual receiving the message,” said Velez, who, like other Scout officials, works closely with trusted Hispanic community organizations and churches to spread the Scouts’ message. “It’s all about relationship-building.”

Yet many Latino parents speak little or no English, and few Scout employees speak Spanish. In the Inland council, four of 19 employees speak Spanish, Daniszewski said. Nationally, only about 180 of 3,000 employees are Spanish-speakers, Nava said. Increasing that number is a key component of the Scouts’ Latino-outreach effort, he said.

Nava visited the Inland area in December to advise the local council and to share the experiences of a Fresno-based council that is one of six Hispanic Initiatives pilot sites for Latino outreach strategies.

That council has increased its percentage of Latino Scouts from 20 to 30 percent since early 2008 through intensive outreach that includes participation in Hispanic festivals, close collaboration with the area’s Catholic diocese, and Spanish-language billboard, radio and television ads, said John Richers, the council CEO.

The Inland council is planning to air Spanish-language radio ads later this year. It will soon receive the new, recently unveiled Spanish-language Boy Scout handbook. The Cub Scouts have had a Spanish-language handbook for a decade.

The Scouts do not require that parents or children are legal U.S. residents. But parents who want to volunteer as Scout leaders must fill out application forms that include a request for a Social Security number.

Nava said that requirement can be waived under a longtime national policy that allows background checks without the numbers. But some councils — including the California Inland Empire — maintain the requirement to ensure children’s safety, Daniszewski said.

Scout outreach workers sometimes learn as they go along what works and what doesn’t work in approaching undocumented immigrants.

Marcell Vargas, a district executive for the Scouts in the Coachella Valley, recalled his first attempt to tell immigrant migrant-worker parents about the Boy Scouts.

When he got out of his car in his tan Scout outfit, which looks a lot like a Border Patrol uniform, some panicked workers jumped in their cars and screeched off.

“I never saw so many cars get of a camp so quickly,” Vargas said with a laugh, recalling the incident 14 years ago at a migrant-worker site in Washington state. “It was an educational process for me. The next time I came back to the camp, I was not in uniform.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: Counter Punch

Nothing more easily elicits roars of assent across a good slice of the political spectrum than the hoarse alarums that wave after wave of brown-skinned illegals continually flood across the border, plunging neighborhoods and whole cities into an inferno of crime, over-whelming cops and prosecutors, clogging the justice system, cramming the prisons.

Lou Dobbs is pondering a political run powered by a thousand pop-eyed commentaries catering to this fear. “A third of the prison population in this country is estimated to be illegal aliens,” he shouts. Glenn Beck screams about “an illegal alien crime wave.” The panic is by no means confined to the nutball right. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, launching his commendable plan for a National Criminal Justice Commission last year, invoked the specter of organized Mexican gangs that supposedly threaten “hundreds” of American cities. “There are an estimated 1 million gang members in the United States, many of them foreign-based,” Webb wrote. “Every American neighborhood is vulnerable. Gangs commit 80% of the crime in some locations. Mexican cartels, which are military-capable, have operations in 230+ U.S. cities.”

It’s all nonsense. There’s no crime wave swollen by brown gangbangers to city-destroying proportions. If you want a lucid walk through the data you can turn to … The American Conservative, whose March issue features a cover story by the magazine’s publisher, Ron Unz. There’s a photo of a tattooed gangbanger, and the title -“HisPANIC,” then the subtitle: “The Myth of Immigrant Crime.”

Yes, this is the magazine co-founded by Pat Buchanan, whose physical form I last clapped eyes on at the Republican convention in the Houston Astrodome in 1992, roaring to a climactic fist-shake against the black and brown hordes who had recently rioted in Los Angeles: “We must take back our cities, and take back our culture, and take back our country!”

Unz comes to statistical analysis of populations and crime data with decent credentials—he majored in theoretical physics at Harvard, then went on to physics graduate study at Cambridge and Stanford before swerving into very successful software work on Wall Street and now a busy life in Silicon Valley, fostering ideas on both sides of the political aisle. I should add that I count him as a discriminating friend, supportive of left ventures such as CounterPunch as well as The American Conservative, whose tiller he took over in 2007.

At the heart of Unz’s essay is the matter of age-weighting. Most serious crime is committed by young males, especially those between 18 and 29. Now, the age distribution of Hispanics and whites in the overall population is markedly different. The median age for Hispanics is around 27; for whites it’s above 40. But to get useful comparisons you need to look at the relative criminality of Hispanics and whites of the same age; you need to sift out immigration-related offenses (more than half of all federal prosecutions) from state-prosecuted crimes such as robbery, rape, murder, burglary, assault and theft; you need to review comparative data state by state, since there are very significant regional differences in the way justice systems are administered, hence significant variations in incarceration rates.

Unz’s bottom line: “Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age.” Since poverty and crime have an intimate connection, and since America’s Hispanics are advancing economically, the Hispanic crime rate will most likely drop more. An important further point: Unz uses Census figures for all the states, with a total estimate in 2008 of around 45 million Hispanics. But there’s a widespread view that illegal immigrants are significantly undercounted. So if there are, as some “brown tide” scaremongers allege, 25 million unreported Hispanic illegals above Census numbers, then the true Hispanic crime rate is 35 percent lower than Unz estimates. Almost beyond the shadow of a doubt, white crime rates nationwide are significantly higher than Hispanic ones. Senator Webb needs to refocus his Threat Assessment.

But what about Los Angeles, allegedly the dystopian HQ of immigrant crime, half Hispanic in population, many of them poor and illegal? All crime rates in LA, Unz explains, have been dropping for two decades. Homicides plunged 18 percent last year. Violent crime is roughly the same in LA as in Portland, Oregon, the whitest major city in America, the same as it was in the lily-white LA of the early 1960s. But the gangs? Ah, yes. You see, the feds dole out hundreds of millions each year for gang prevention. Pay a city to find a gang problem and the city will oblige.

Unz had a question for me: “Pro-immigrant advocacy organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year in this exact subject area. So if my theories were correct or even just remotely plausible, wouldn’t such a vast army of paid researchers have long since discovered the same evidence and blasted it out to the four corners of the earth via a very supportive mainstream media?”

My answer: remember that mainstream NGO liberalism—starting with Rockefeller and particularly saturating every environmental foundation—is built on the bedrock of demographic panic about the pullulating poor, particularly the brown and black and yellow hordes. Every billionaire setting up his foundation almost invariably has population control in his mandate. Shoulder to shoulder with hysteria about immigrant crime waves rides fear of the fecund darker races. So I think we can surmise an instinctive racist bias among foundation liberals, their likely belief that Hispanics do commit more crimes and hence their desire to steer clear of all data that they fear might ratify this instinct.

Now, among the names that cause Nation columnist Katha Pollitt to twitch with reflexive irritation, the name Cockburn can most certainly be included. Hardly had I published Unz’s conclusions in the Nation magazine than Pollitt dashed to her laptop to pound a peeved commentary.

It’s “annoying,” she snapped, “when conservatives take credit for work liberals have been doing for much longer and far more seriously. It’s even more irritating when a leftist [that's AC] is so eager to bash liberals, he joins the parade.”

Then Pollitt listed a number of papers from the liberal end of the spectrum on the topic of Hispanics and crime, plus some testy comments from academics working in this field, claiming that Unz was reinventing the wheel and that what the American Conservative was trumpeting on its cover was old news, known to all, or at least to liberal communicators such as Pollitt, though not Cockburn, all too eager to take yet another whack at the pwogs.

The trouble is that Katha–to judge from this piece at least–doesn’t actually know anything about the topic of Hispanic crime, therefore doesn’t know what’s widely known, what’s not widely known, and what’s completely mistaken. Even the very limited research she references is on the topic of “immigrant Hispanic crime” not “overall Hispanic crime,” and these studies are sometimes are highly misleading for that reason. For example Katha quotes Rubén Rumbaut at UC Irvine as saying patronizingly on the phone to her that “I’m amused by [Unz's] ‘discovery’ of something I’ve been writing about since the last millennium.” She encourages Nation readers to peruse a 2007 paper by Rumbaut. Actually, this paper claims–wrongly–that Mexican crime rates skyrocket 700 per cent in the generation after immigration. According to a Rumbaut chart, American-born Hispanics are 250 percent more likely to be imprisoned than American-born whites–a result which would be grim news for America’s future if it were correct. Here’s a link.. Scroll down a bit to Figure 3, and Nation readers can discover where Tom Tancredo may have got his ideas about Latino crime rates.

But Katha seems to have been in too much of a hurry even to look at the studies she cited as proof that “everyone already knew” exactly the opposite of what the studies actually claimed. Similarly, she cites Harvard’s Robert J. Sampson as having had an op-ed in the New York Times a few years back, arguing that immigrant Hispanics had low crime rates. But this column didn’t say anything about the much larger number of native-born Hispanics, a very different question.

Pollitt’s derision–buttressed by a couple of academics (not a breed renowned for intellectual generosity) about the supposed lack of originality of Unz’s piece–is misplaced. As Unz points out, no one previously explored the age-adjustment or cross-correlation methods, even in the academic literature.

Let’s go to the all important general point: just how well known are the facts about Hispanics and crime? Anecdotally, I should say that my report on Unz’s TAC piece, scrutinized by a few Nation editors—presumably well informed on social issues –did not elicit the swift rebuke that I was flogging a dead horse.

It’s true that some academic specialists have generally been aware that Latinos didn’t have especially high crime rates (though as far as I know nobody’s previously used Unz’s particular methodologies to make the point directly and quantitatively.) Even the volume of academic literature seems extremely scant, relative to the magnitude of the subject involved. Over the last decade, there have been a couple of books by Ramiro Martinez dealing with the subject, and a relatively small number of journal articles, few of which are very direct or explicit. But there’s a huge difference between academic specialists being generally aware of this, and perhaps occasionally communicating their results to other academic specialists via turgid journal articles and books, and this information getting out to a wider public audience.

As a Nation reader responded crisply to Pollitt: “You are wrong to suggest that a few articles here and there have successfully debunked the Latino crime wave myth. They have not done anything of the kind except perhaps through those few who read the articles. The myth is still pervasive not only because of the blatant racists out there but because it has not effectively been debunked in academia and the media. ..Outside of your rarefied circles, their are many, many people who believe Latinos are the worse criminals in our society and they will continue to do so until as long as racism comes down from the wealthiest layers of society. That is what you should be reporting on rather than telling us that we all know Latins aren’t all criminals because someone, somewhere wrote in some obscure article that they aren’t. Please come down out of your ivory tower and learn what racist viewpoints the average person has and why they have such viewpoints.

“As far as I can tell,” Unz says, “there’s been virtually no effort to get the information out to a wider audience. I’m pretty sure I’ve almost never seen anything mentioned in any of the six newspapers I’ve read daily for the last 15 years, or in any of the numerous opinion magazines to which I subscribe. If you go on the websites of the major liberal pro-immigrant/pro-Hispanic public advocacy organizations ranging from the National Immigration Forum to La Raza you’ll find almost no mention of this claim anywhere, let alone any study or report highlighting it. If you try using Google, you’ll find very, very little that suggests otherwise.

“In fact, one of the very few individuals who’s directly specialized in this field is Ramiro Martinez, cited by Ms. Pollitt, who’s written almost the only books directly on the topic of Hispanic crime. I sent him a copy of my article, which he said he liked, and we traded several notes. He actually agreed with me how unfortunate it was that so little of the public had been informed of these important facts. My claim is certainly not that the academic specialists have been deluded, but simply that they, and the organizations sponsoring them, have done an extremely poor job of communicating their findings to the general public.”

Katha cites Sampson’s op-ed in the NYT, addressing crime rates of immigrant Hispanics. Meanwhile, there have been a large number of major NYT news stories focusing on murderous Latino gangs, Latino prison inmates, and Latino social pathologies which have provided exactly the opposite impression, let alone what’s daily on Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and similar media outlets. Given how much money Ford, Soros, et al., spend, maybe during all these years they could have issued one study or report entitled “Hispanic Crime Rates” arguing that Hispanics have approximately the same crime rates as whites, and sent it out with a big press release.

There are at least about 50 million Hispanics in America, and they’re projected to become 25 percent of the total national population. Whether they have high crime rates or low crime rates is a huge issue for the future of America, and a very large fraction of the public wrongly believes they have high crime rates. As Unz wrote to me, “All my article really does is prove that rocks fall downward–but that may still be a huge revelation to lots of people. I’d be very curious if Ms. Pollitt can find any sentence in any article which she’s ever written or which The Nation has ever published by someone else saying something like ‘Hispanics seem to have approximately the same crime rates as whites of the same age.’”

Probably naívely, I thought it encouraging that a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan should devote its March cover and a substantial number of pages to a persuasive assault on right-wing hysteria about the supposedly astronomic crime rates of Hispanics in America. But aside from my own piece – I think the first commentary on Unz’s work – The American Conservative’s cover story raised no interest on the left. However, reaction across the larger political spectrum reaction on the right swiftly gave the lie to Pollitt’s claim that this was all stale news.

Slate listed Unz’s piece as “one of the top pieces of the day, saying “Ron Unz takes on, and takes down, one of the far-right’s most cherished doctrines”. Tyler Cowen, New York Times economics columnist, called it “An excellent article, full of good information.” Heather Horn, announced on the The Atlantic Monthly/Atlantic Wire that “Unz debunks the high Hispanic crime rate myth…the piece requires a full reading.”

Over at the libertarian Reason Magazine Rodney Balko called it “One of the more courageous endeavors I’ve seen from a political magazine in a long time.” USA Today called attention to it.

The Ron Paul movement, fresh from its remarkable victory in the CPAC presidential straw poll, was quite supportive. Not only did the Ron Paul News website prominently highlight Unz’s article and mention it in a twitter feed to their supporters, but LewRockwell.com, a popular website closely associated with Ron Paul, republished large excerpts of the piece, and followed it up with several blog items focusing on the ongoing debate surrounding the piece . A couple of the leading anti-Immigrationist publications struck back with lengthy and detailed critiques.

Unz responded to these with specific rebuttals published on the TAC website, where his original article can be found.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: Think Progress

Friday, while promoting his book “No Apology: The Case For American Greatness” at the National Press Club, former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) staked out a stance against a brand of populism which he describes as scapegoating, or looking for someone to blame for the fundamental problems that face the U.S. — specifically immigrants:

There’s another branch of the word populism which I’m referring to when I say these words, and that is that there are some people who are scapegoating — who look for someone to blame for more fundamental problems that we have as a society. It may be a politician, it may be a Wall Street banker, it may be immigrants, it may be a certain ethnic group…

You’ll see people take on immigrants and suggest that immigration is the source of America’s challenges. Our problems are more significant than that and that kind of scapegoating in my view doesn’t make sense. And I would note that it exists.

Watch it:

Romney, who ran smear ads in 2008 portraying fellow presidential contenders as soft on immigration, appears to be in the process of changing his position on the issue yet again. In his book, Romney echoes today’s remarks, writing “populism sometimes takes the form of being anti-immigrant, and appearing anti-immigrant, and that likewise is destructive to a nation which has built its economy through the innovation and hard work and creativity of people who have come here from foreign shores.” With his eyes on a 2012 presidential run, Romney is amongst a growing number of Republicans who have recognize the need to adjust their immigration rhetoric and regain the trust of a growing Latino demographic that might otherwise be voting Republican.

Ironically, back in 2008 Romney embraced the powerfully symbolic political backing of anti-immigrant hysteric, former Rep. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO), and Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is currently under investigation for racial profiling and civil rights allegations related to his immigration policing efforts. Perhaps Romney himself succumbed to the “temptations of populism” he discusses in his new book when he enthusiastically accepted the endorsements of two public figures who have essentially built their careers on the kind of nativist populism that Romney warns against.

Despite his disdain for the politics of scapegoating, Romney still described the tea party movement as “an encouraging development” at today’s Press Club appearance.

Popularity: 4% [?]

From: The South Chicagoan

Texas had its primary elections this week, and the political observers who want to tout the desires of social conservatives are taking it as a plus that Gov. Rick Perry managed to win his primary – defeating Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison because (the local pundits say) Texans were voting for the candidate who had NO ties to Washington, D.C.

But in that mass of campaigns for Texas politics, there also was evidence that the growing Latino vote is asserting itself. Could we someday see the day when an Election Day sees this “Tea Party” crushed by a growing Latino vote?

IT’S VERY POSSIBLE.

For on the same night that Perry supposedly rang up a victory for conservative “values,” Linda Chavez-Thompson of San Antonio won the Democratic Party’s nomination for lieutenant governor. In a three-way primary campaign, she took over half (53 percent) of the vote.

Her voter base was a combination of organized labor (she is a former vice president of the AFL-CIO) and the Latino vote in Texas, which is spread throughout the state but is particularly dominant in the southern counties along the U.S./Mexico border.

We’re not going to get the “head to head” electoral competition in Texas this time. Perry will be running against former Houston Mayor Bill White in the general election. Chavez-Thompson will be paired up with White – even though she technically is running against incumbent Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

I’M SURE SOME people will say that nobody pays attention to the lieutenant governor candidates, and focuses their time on the gubernatorial candidates – Perry versus White. For those who pick White, Chavez-Thompson will be an extra bonus.

But this case catches my attention because of the fact that the “right” is trying to portray the elections taking place this cycle as some sort of attempt to “take back” the country for their ideals. Let’s be honest, many of those people don’t view the growing Latino population as fitting in with their ideals.

“Conservatism has never been stronger than it is today,” Perry said, during his Election Night victory speech at a barbecue joint in the Texas capital city of Austin. “We’re taking our country back, one vote at a time, one election at a time.”

Yet at a time when “the right” wants to think they’re racking up victory after victory so they can start imposing an agenda that half the nation will find abhorrent (the latest Gallup Organization poll shows President Barack Obama with a 52 percent “favorable” rating, compared to 41 percent “unfavorable”), we’re also seeing electoral victories showing that Latino candidates also are capable of winning elections.

THOSE CANDIDATES INCLUDE Chavez-Thompson (although, oddly enough, one of White’s opponents in the Democratic primary – Farouk Shami – focused much of his campaign strategy on getting the Tejano population in support), who is a San Antonio resident now, but grew up working in cotton fields near Lubbock.

Although she dropped out of high school, she later rose to positions of authority within organized labor in Texas and at the national level. She also got involved with the Democratic Party, rising to the post of vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Those labor ties were Chavez-Thompson’s big backers financially during her primary. The Dallas Morning News newspaper reported she received about $225,000 for her primary campaign, much of which came from labor union-affiliated political action committees.

That may have been enough to get her through the primary. But Dewhurst, according to the Morning News, has already raised $2.8 million for his general election campaign (he ran unopposed for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor).

HE HAS A huge financial advantage, along with the benefits of incumbency. So I’m not naïve enough to think this election is going to be a cakewalk for Chavez-Thompson.

But in a state such as Texas, where Latinos account for 36.5 percent of the overall population, that gives Chavez-Thompson a base from which to draw votes – particularly if that Texas boastfulness gets the best of GOP candidates and they start talking their partisan trash that claims to be about values but is more about exclusion.

Dewhurst could find himself in a closer campaign than he bargained for.

And years from now, when Latino voter percentages catch up with our share of the population, this could turn out to be one of the elections that started the process. There is only so far that the conservatives can go before we Latinos have to start thinking about “taking back” this country (not just because it’s Texas) for “real” democratic ideals.

Popularity: 8% [?]

From: Latina Lista

In 2008, it seemed an odd coincidence that there should be two murders, later deemed hate crimes, of Latino immigrants so close together.

In July 2008, Luis Ramirez was beaten to death in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. Eventually six people were indicted for his death — four of them police officers.

Four months later in November in Long Island, New York, Marcelo Lucero was stabbed to death by a group of teens on the lookout for “Hispanics.”

Both these high-profile cases aroused an uneasiness, not only in law enforcement, but in advocates for immigrant rights. Could this anti-immigrant sentiment at such a local level be indicative of something bigger?

Now, a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center titled Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism validates those feelings.

According to the report, the number of racist hate groups rose from 926 in 2008 to 932 in 2009.

The increase caps a decade in which the number of hate groups surged by 55 percent.
There also has been a surge in “nativist extremist” groups - vigilante organizations that go beyond advocating strict immigration policy and actually confront or harass suspected immigrants.

These groups grew from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 in 2009, a rise of nearly 80 percent.

That’s not just bad news for immigrant rights groups, law enforcement or immigrant communities, but it’s bad news for every American citizen, especially Latino citizens who fit what these groups think Latinos should look like.

They haven’t figured out that Latinos come in all colors, sizes and accents.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s report mirrors the findings of the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics survey.

In 2007, the FBI reported that of the 1,347 victims of hate crimes motivated by the offender’s bias towards a particular ethnicity/national origin, 62 percent were Latinos. In 2008, the percentage rose to 65 percent though the overall victim rate fell to 1226.

Statistics for 2009 won’t be published until the fall of 2010.

Yet, people are not waiting around for federal reports to sound the alarm that everyone needs to be aware of the rise of these groups which seem intent to spread fear, mistrust and outright misleading information when it comes to Hispanic immigrants.

Last week at an appearance in Seattle, Washington, Tom Perez, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, stated in an interview that hate crimes against Latinos were on the rise.

Yet, one writer disputed Perez’ claims.

“Robert F. protectionist” writes that Perez got his facts wrong in a piece under the headline “False Picture of Hate Crimes Drawn by Obama Civil Rights Chief.”

According to “Robert,” the 2009 FBI hate crime data doesn’t show an increase at all but a reduction of crimes against Hispanics. He never links to the report but continues to cite a series of itemized areas.

In digging around the report, I found, that in fairness, the figures “Robert” cites do show a slight decrease but don’t dispute the findings in the same report that Latino victimization of hate crimes rose to 65% in 2008 from 62% in 2007.

Yr. Incidents Offenses Victims Offenders

2007 595 775 830 758

2008 561 735 792 711

Also, a comparison of the two years show that the so-called reduction has a long way to go to be considered an improvement of any kind.

“Robert” ends the piece by saying that more “factual details” can be found at the FAIR website. FAIR stands for Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Ironically, FAIR has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being a hate group.

Historically, hate groups have relied on violence to get their convoluted message out to the masses but nowadays, they have learned that words carry just as much weight as a flaming torch and are just as incendiary when facts are distorted enough to get people justifiably mad to speak out.

Recently, in response to a Chicago Sun-Times three-day series on young Latinos in the Chicago area where the web editors had to shut down the comments section because of a flood of racist comments, an op-ed columnist at the paper declared the country had a new pasttime:

“America’s most popular sport is not baseball or football, but immigrant bashing.”

Popularity: 6% [?]

From: Mercury News

Every poll shows there are few things California’s burgeoning Latino community wants more from government this year than immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for persons now in this country illegally, also known as amnesty.
But despite happy talk from President Obama and some other leading Democrats, chances of this happening are very slim.
For Democrats who now possess large but shaky majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House are not nearly as united on this cause as they are on health care — and their brand of unity on that cause has produced nothing close to what Obama promised as a candidate in 2008. There is no publicly run health insurance option on the table. The proposed requirement that all citizens must have health insurance has all but disappeared, and more.
If Democrats who once appeared united on health care reform can’t even pass a truncated version of that, there’s not much chance they will produce an immigration amnesty no matter what their leaders might say. For there’s nothing even approaching unity on immigration reform. That’s because politicians of all stripes well know that no matter how many requirements and fines they might impose on illegal immigrants seeking permanent legal status, there will be strong opposition back home.
Why would Democrats bother keeping on talking about various combinations of immigration amnesty and tougher border and employment enforcement when they know it won’t pass?
Chances are it’s because they’ve been promising reform (amnesty) to Hispanic voters so long and have reaped so many Latino votes in the process that any verbal backing off risks alienating much of this increasingly important voter bloc.
Some call it pandering, but Democrats lack the votes to prevent a Senate filibuster on any immigration reform plan that involves amnesty, even with a different name.
So we see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco carefully saying her chamber will likely wait until after the Senate acts on immigration before making any moves of its own. The odds of the Senate acting first are somewhere between slim and none; all the prominent immigration proposals of the past few months have emanated from the House.
Meanwhile, many first-term House Democrats elected in the 2008 Obama sweep fear a strong voter backlash if they OK amnesty. They and their frequent Republican jousting partners are alike in one important way: Most care more about their own re-election chances than virtually any other cause.
That’s why Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, quickly signed off on Pelosi’s plan to let the Senate act first and prove it can “get something done.”
Don’t expect Obama to push Congress on this even as hard as he did on health care, where he’s often criticized from the left for not being strong enough. Obama’s top aide, former Illinois Congressman Rahn Emanuel, once called immigration “the third rail of American politics.” So the White House knows this is a toxic issue and will understand when Democrats run from it in an election year.
And they will. Not just members of the House. Senators like Colorado’s appointed Michael Bennet, who faces his first election campaign this year, will be understandably leery of the issue that made Tom Tancredo, a longtime Colorado congressman, into a national figure and a presidential candidate.
Obama, meanwhile, nominally backs a plan written by Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the House Hispanic caucus chairman who knows the president well from their days in Chicago politics. This one calls for much tougher enforcement efforts, criminal background checks for current illegals wanting to stay, a six-year wait for permanent legal status. It’s similar to the plan pursued unsuccessfully several times by Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president.
Noting that 10 million Hispanic voters turned out in 2008, the vast majority going for Obama, amnesty advocate Frank Sharry, head of a group called America’s Voice, threatens that “a lot of those voters won’t turn out in the mid-term elections” in swing states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida unless there is an amnesty of some kind.
That vague threat carries less clout with most members of Congress than the letters they get from angry constituents — and two polls late last year found that about 60 percent of U.S. citizens oppose any form of legalization for illegal immigrants.
All of which means Gutierrez and others who insist there will be immigration reform this year are whistling past the graveyard. It won’t happen.

Popularity: 7% [?]