The Edsall Strategy

A very insightful article from Steve Sailer of http://www.vdare.com/ to follow up a previous post of his here. also wrote a book called Barack Obama: America's Half-Blood Prince which you can get here.

The Edsall Strategy
From my new VDARE.com column:
Among the most interesting of the countless postmortems on Republican Scott Brown’s victory over Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts Senate race was veteran Democratic journalist Thomas Edsall’s Ghost Story in The New Republic on January 20, 2010.Edsall’s article is one of the more realistic (if inadvertent) works of political advice the GOP has received—outside of the pages of http://www.vdare.com/.
From a tsk-tsking Democratic perspective, Edsall outlines the inexorable logic of what Peter Brimelow calls the Sailer Strategy: as the non-white percentage of the electorate increases, the Republicans must (and can) win a growing share of the white vote.Of course, the Republican leadership (such as it is) will find Edsall’s insights offensive rather than illuminating. They are less likely to appreciate them than to try to refute them, by more brilliant stratagems such as making Michael Steele head of the Republican National Committee.
Edsall writes:
"As everyone knows, the United States is undergoing a profound demographic transformation. Non-Hispanic whites are likely to become a minority by the year 2042. This shift underlies the theory of a Democratic realignment: Pro-Democratic groups are growing while the pro-Republican white population is declining."Edsall goes on, however, to note that just twelve months of the Obama Administration demonstrated to many white voters even in liberal Massachusetts that they might not be happy with their ordained future. Over the course of 2009, he says, "White, middle-class voters ceased to think of Obama as a protector of their interests."Over the years, Edsall has repeatedly tried warned liberals that the diabolically clever Republican leadership is going to attempt to please the white majority by acting as "a protector of their interests."That would make sense. But I’ll believe it when I see it. ...Edsall wrote in Chain Reaction in 1992:
"Together, the twin issues of race and taxes have created a new, ideologically coherent coalition by pitting taxpayers against tax recipients, by pitting the advocates of meritocracy against proponents of special preference, by pitting the private sector against the public sector, by pitting those in the labor force against the jobless, and by pitting those who bear many of the costs of federal intervention against those whose struggle for equality has been advanced by interventionist government policies. "Personally, I’ve long felt that Edsall’s alarums sounded like an awfully good strategy for the GOP—politically, but also morally. After all, what’s the point of majority rule if not to benefit the majority?
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Scott Brown's Pickup Truck... Is Racist????

A timely article from www.vdare.com analyzing the election of Scott Brown, which follows this post about New Jersey and this about the upcoming election in Arizona. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Scott Brown's Pickup Truck... Is Racist????
See alsoScott Brown’s Victory: New Englanders Love Their “Little Platoons”. Immigration Is Hurting Them and Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Massacre: The Unspoken Race Dimension
Scott Brown drives a pickup truck. He put it in his ads.Keith Olbermann thinks the “pickup truck” is a coded racial attack on the President.Actually, said truck was the subject of a not very coded, just as racial, attack by the President. As Michelle Malkin wrote
“While a self-satisfied and entitled Coakley vacationed or partied with D.C. lobbyists, Brown drove around in his GM truck, shaking hands in the cold outside Fenway Park — earning the scorn of Coakley and Obama, who mocked Brown’s truck six times at the Boston rally this weekend to the delight of blue-nosed Democrats.”Perhaps Obama and Olbermann were remembering, Howard Dean, who said he wanted to be “the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,” causing Al Sharpton to launch an attack on him.
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Scott Brown’s Victory: New Englanders Love Their “Little Platoons”. Immigration Is Hurting Them

A timely article from www.vdare.com analyzing the election of Scott Brown, which follows this post about New Jersey and this about the upcoming election in Arizona. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Scott Brown’s Victory: New Englanders Love Their “Little Platoons”. Immigration Is Hurting Them
See Also:Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Massacre: The Unspoken Race Dimension
By Matthew Richer
“To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections”, wrote Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France.
New England has always been a region of “little platoons”, where people proudly retain their local customs and accents. It’s not a place you can just move to and suddenly “belong” (as my California-born wife can attest). You have to put your time in here before you can become a bona fide New Englander.
That is something we both love about New England—and it is also one of the many things our elites can’t stand about it.
During his 1831 visit to America, Alexis de Tocqueville was the most impressed with New England. It was in New England’s “little platoons” that de Tocqueville found the American spirit of self-reliance and volunteerism to be the strongest and most admirable.
Unfortunately, New England—and Massachusetts in particular—has also produced an elite culture, a class of people who are largely the product of the region’s many prestigious universities and prep schools.
In recent decades, however, there has been a growing antagonism between everyday New Englanders and the post-American elites who claim to represent them. Granted, we rarely read about it in the press, but the tension is definitely there.
Just ask the good people of Lewiston, Maine and Nashua, New Hampshire who never voted to have Somali Bantu refugees forced into their neighborhoods at their own expense.
In my opinion, and I travel extensively though New England, the forced introduction of refugees into New England communities whose only crime was being too white and well-functioning has jolted the political awareness of people here more than any other public policy trend in my lifetime.
In a recent interview, Peter Brimelow said that people are drawn to VDARE.com because they feel especially discouraged about the way their country and culture are being forcibly dismantled, “and they feel also that something is being done to them”.
That is certainly the way people feel in places like East Boston, which was until recently a charming neighborhood with great Italian restaurants, but has been transformed by Salvadoran immigrants and turned into a stronghold of the MS-13.
It is this sense of helplessness and frustration that has drawn many people together to support Scott Brown.
I can’t tell you how many Scott Brown signs I’ve seen in places I would never expect to vote Republican—even handmade “Vote for Brown” signs made out of plastic, wood, and cardboard. The farther you go from Boston, the more Brown signs you see.
Prior to this election, the closest thing I have ever seen to this level of voter enthusiasm was Mitt Romney’s 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy. Back then, vast numbers of Massachusetts voters were enormously enthusiastic about the chance to finally unseat Kennedy.
Unfortunately, as I wrote in my VDARE.com obituary for Ted Kennedy, Mitt Romney ran a poor campaign. He also came across as a polished out-of-town CEO, which hampered his ability to connect to voters.
But Scott Brown is a local guy who comes across like someone you might know. He retains his regional accent and mannerisms. He is married with kids and serves in the National Guard. In other words, he is not your typical senator, and that’s a big reason why people like him-and dislike him.
“We are running against the machine” Scott Brown and his supporters keep saying, a reference to the Democratic Party Establishment that has had a stranglehold over Massachusetts for generations.
For example: One piece of the Massachusetts machine who excelled at pretending he was “one of us” was former Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas “Tip” O’Neill.
“All politics is local” was Tip O’Neill’s famous phrase. And for years now many Democrats, especially in Massachusetts, have tried to ride the strength of this feel-good slogan into elected office, repeating it ad nauseam.
The problem is that most people actually believe that Tip O’Neill was giving advice on how to govern. Actually, it was only advice on how to campaign.
In 1936, Tip O’Neill ran for the Cambridge City Council. He campaigned everywhere except in the neighborhood where he was born and raised simply because he assumed that he already had those votes in the bag.
After O’Neill lost the race, he reviewed the vote totals by precinct and discovered that he had actually done worse in his own neighborhood. “People like to be asked,” a neighbor explained to him.
O’Neill never made that mistake again. And he never lost another race.
When it came to governing, however, Tip O’Neill believed that all politics was really national, or rather, international. O’Neill cared little about the people in his own congressional district, as is clear from his life-long support for Open Borders.
“We have committed our nation to the preservation of freedom for all peoples of the world; not only those of Northern Europe” he loftily told the House of Representatives during the debate over the 1965 Immigration Act.
In 1983, Speaker O’Neill continued to defend America’s open borders immigration policy, claiming that “The pluralistic society which has resulted from the amalgamation of so many cultures has enriched the lives of all Americans and has strengthened our national character.”
But when O’Neill resigned from office in 1985, he immediately sold his Cambridge home and moved to a racially homogeneous Cape Cod village—Harwich Port, MA, six-tenths of one percent black, nine-tenths of one percent Hispanic. So much for being a local guy (with an “enriched” life).
Martha Coakley’s biggest mistake was that she ignored Tip’s advice and did not ask for our votes. In fact, Coakley took a week-long vacation between Christmas and New Year’s Day, so sure was she of being elected senator.
While Martha Coakley was on vacation, Scott Brown was driving his now-famous truck across the state. In freezing-cold temperatures, he stood on street corners and in front of supermarkets. Brown shook hands, he listened to voters, and asked for their support.
One of Martha Coakley’s more revealing moments was when a reporter asked her why she wasn’t spending more time on the stump like Scott Brown.
“As opposed to standing outside Fenway Park? In the cold? Shaking hands?” Coakley sneered, referring to a recent Brown ad that showed him talking to voters outside Fenway Park.
Standing outside in the cold is not unusual for people around here. Most of us do it every day.
Michael Kinsley defined a gaffe as the moment when a politician inadvertently tells the truth. Perhaps Martha Coakley’s most revealing gaffe was when she told a radio host that former Red Sox ace Curt Schilling was a “Yankees fan.”
The Schilling remark vividly illustrates that Martha Coakley is really not a member of one of the New England’s little platoons, but a post-American elite who wishes only to preside over them. It’s hard to imagine how anyone can be both a diehard Red Sox fan and a “citizen of the world”.
You will not find people like Martha Coakley or Ted Kennedy cheering on the local high school team, attending the church fair, riding the subway, or having coffee at the local diner. They look down on local customs as bourgeois.
Some Republican elites, of course, are just as good at pretending to be one of the gang as Tip O‘Neill. For a time, George W. Bush convinced millions that he was regular Texan who loved Jesus and baseball. In reality, Bush was actually a fan of Hispanicizing the game, attempting to turn baseball into the “international pastime”.
Last week, I wrongly predicted that Brown would lose the election after his last debate performance because of his stammering delivery, and reluctance to attack Martha Coakley, especially on immigration (where his position was actually quite good).
However, Brown scored a knockout punch with the now-famous line: “With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s seat. It’s the people’s seat.”
What people don’t seem to realize about this oft-quoted remark is that Brown did not direct it at Martha Coakley, but at the debate moderator, David Gergen—a permanent fixture of the political establishment, who clearly leaned toward Coakley.
It was David Gergen [email him] who referred to the open Senate seat as “the Kennedy’s seat”. And he obviously did not enjoy being corrected. Our elites never do.
Another cog in the Massachusetts machine that is now slowing is the Open Borders Boston Globe, which has been lording over the commonwealth for more than a century.
For weeks, The Boston Globe has been shrilly denouncing Scott Brown’s ascendancy, furious that the public is no longer listening to them when it comes to electing people to public office.
Have you ever seen the look on someone’s face when they’re giving a public speech, and people suddenly start getting up and leaving the room? That has been the tone of the Boston Globe lately.
The Boston Globe is reportedly losing $1 million per week and has had to lay off much of its staff (although it still has a full-time immigration reporter). They have only themselves to blame for their declining influence.
Quietly, immigration has been no small factor in this election. I’ve talked to several workers in the Brown campaign in recent days and they all say that frustration with out-of-control immigration is a top voter concern. Brown used illegal immigration in his push-polling. And we have the testimony of liberal policy analyst Karen Dolan [Email her]that many of the her Massachusetts female friends were supporting Brown, to her disgust, not merely because “he looks good naked” (in his celebrated 1982 Cosmopolitan centerfold) but because “they think [Coakley] wants to bus in immigrants take over their schools…They think she will take their tax dollars and give it to an "illegal alien" in Arizona for an abortion.”[ Scott Brown’s Body seduces. Take A Cold Shower, Huffington Post, January 19, 2010.]
And, over the last few weeks, I’ve also been asking lots of voters why they support Scott Brown. Significantly, they are not primarily motivated by popular issues like healthcare, taxes, or terrorism, important as these are.
Rather, what motivates a great many Brown supporters is the preservation of their way of life—a way of life that has gradually been undermined by a political class that cares nothing for them.
People love their little platoons. The Scott Brown phenomenon was really their opportunity to band together to defend and reclaim them.
Is this a great country or what?
Matthew Richer (email him) is a public relations specialist who has recently returned to his native Massachusetts. He is the former American Editor of Right NOW magazine.

Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Massacre: The Unspoken Race Dimension

A timely article from www.vdare.com analyzing the election of Scott Brown, which follows this post about New Jersey and this about the upcoming election in Arizona. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Massacre: The Unspoken Race Dimension
See also Today’s Letter: MIT Graduate Reader Says Race (Etc.), Not Income, Determined MA Vote
By Washington Watcher
Scott Brown’s stunning victory over Martha Coakley is filled with national implications. Of course, what makes his win so dramatic is that Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the country. Brown underlined this in his victory speech when he said "When there's trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured, there's trouble everywhere, and they know it."
Democrats control Massachusetts’ entire Congressional delegation and Obama won the state with a 26% margin in 2008. That a Republican can now win a statewide election by over five points is truly remarkable.
But if the GOP is to learn any lessons about this election, they need to look at what really makes Massachusetts different.
Massachusetts is blue—but it is also still White. According to Census estimates, 79.2% of the population is White, 8.6% is Hispanic, 7% is Black, and 5% are Asian. In 2008 exit polls, Blacks made up 9% of the electorate (probably disproportionately high because of the Obama effect), whites made up 82% and Hispanics and Asians both made up 3%.
While no one took exit polls on Tuesday night, it is a very safe bet to assume that Whites made up an even greater percentage of the electorate this election than they did in 2008. Brown won by getting huge numbers of white independents and white Democrats to shift the GOP.
Whites are the only swing voters in America. There is not, in fact, "trouble everywhere."

Democrats do not need to worry about losing in Detroit, DC, or Atlanta.

William F. Buckley famously quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the 2000 members of the faculty of Harvard University. But even the random white names in the Boston phone book would normally have voted Democratic. In 2008, Barack Obama won 59% of the white vote in Massachusetts and John Kerry won 64% to retain his senate seat. In contrast, only 43% of whites nationwide voted for Obama.
However, aside from the Harvard professors, most of the white Democrats in Massachusetts are not liberals who are tied to the party out of ideology. Rather, they are Irish ethnics and union members wedded to the Democratic machine for cultural reasons. These people were rioting when blacks were bussed into their schools, but they still voted for Ted Kennedy.
Republicans will never win the Harvard professors over. But they can win over the white ethnics and Union members, as Reagan and Nixon did in their landslide reelections. Scott Brown did an outstanding job appealing to this demographic. His campaign became synonymous with his GMC Canyon pickup with 200,000 miles on the odometer. As Peggy Noonan noted, "He is a regular guy, looks like an American."
Coakley made it clear she was with the Harvard professors, not the phone book, when she insulted Brown for shaking hands outside Fenway Park, called Red Sox hero and Brown supporter Curt Schilling a "Yankee Fan," and said that the American people were wrong on Health Care.
But as much as the national Democrats want to put all the blame on Coakley, Brown would not have been able to win were it not for the enormous unpopularity among Barack Obama among whites. And we cannot forget that Obama’s fall from grace among whites began when he sided with black Harvard Professor Henry Gates against Irish-American Cambridge Cop James Crowley.
On July 22, when Barack Obama’s approval ratings among whites was still well above 50%, he said Crowley "acted stupidly" in arresting black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates for disorderly conduct and suggested that racial profiling was involved.
Only 20% of whites believed Obama’s comments on the incident were appropriate and his approval ratings immediately plummeted among them.
Obama has not held a press conference since.
Brown made absolutely no comments on Gatesgate or any other racial issues. But MSNBC mudslinger Keith Olbermann still called him a "racist" and "reactionary" because he accepted support from the Tea Party movement, which Olbermann is "the saddest collection of people who don’t want to admit why they really hate since the racists of the South in the sixties insisted they were really just concerned about states’ rights." [Olbermann: Scott Brown's A 'Homophobic, Racist, Teabagging Supporter of Violence Against Women', NewBusters.com, January 18, 2010]
Olbermann’s comments actually have an indirect relationship with the truth. With the Democratic nomination in 2008 between a black man and a white female and then Barack Obama appointing that woman as Secretary of State, an African American as Attorney General, and a Hispanic Woman as his first Supreme Court Justice, white men are legitimately concerned.
As Donny Deutsch said, appearing on the same TV show as Peggy Noonan:
"[Brown] is a traditional looking middle-aged white male. We're going back to basics. You know, we obviously have our first African-American president, we've had the female candidates and what not. You look at him, he looks like the candidate, the traditional view of the candidate."
No doubt some voters were indeed happy to go "back to basics" with Brown.
Furthermore, there is an unspoken but obvious racial dimension aspect to Obamacare: it is not just an increase of government power and spending—it is also a transfer of that spending from whites (who are the main benefactors of Medicare benefits that will be cut; and of course the bulk of taxpayers) to minorities (who make up over half of the uninsured.)
As the white share of the population of the country continues to decline, there is only one way for the Republicans to get back into to power: to win the James Crowley vote in Massachusetts.
And while voters may have told pollsters that health care was the number one issue in this campaign, Republicans should not think that parroting the Club for Growth talking points is going to be a consistent winner among this demographic. While these people opposed Obamacare, they also oppose free trade and support tougher regulations on Wall Street.
There are two issues that James Crowley voters are most at odds with the Democratic Party: immigration and affirmative action. Scott Brown did not mention affirmative action. He took a pretty strong position against illegal immigration in his platform, but did not make it a campaign issue (although he seems to have used it in his push-polling).
Martha Coakley’s weakness and public opposition to Obama made it possible for Brown to win by making populist appeals with free market economics. But this will not work in every election.
If Republicans want to make Brown’s takeover of the James Crowley vote permanent, they need to make opposition to mass immigration and affirmative action the centerpiece of their agenda.
"Washington Watcher" [email him]] is an anonymous source Inside The Beltway.

An AZ Reader Predicts RINO Gov. Jan Brewer Will Be Replaced By Immigration Patriot Dean Martin; etc.

A timely article from www.vdare.com about illegal students in Arizona, which follows this post about New Jersey and this about the election in Massachusettes. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

An AZ Reader Predicts RINO Gov. Jan Brewer Will Be Replaced By Immigration Patriot Dean Martin
From: Sandra Miller (e-mail her)
Re: Rob Sanchez’s Column: Close The Schools And Dump The Criminal Aliens On Obama’s Doorstep
I accompanied Sanchez when he confronted the Kyrene School Board members on the subject of how many illegal aliens they have enrolled in their district. Their runaround was truly impressive, even for liberal politicians.
Like Sanchez, I wish Republican Governor Jan Brewer would do something about the illegals aliens in our Arizona schools. Her long history as an elected official shows no evidence of it, however.
Brewer was elected Secretary of State in 2002 so she held office when Proposition 200 was the talk of Arizona and when it eventually passed. Brewer implemented its provisions but was careful to do only what the law required and no more.
Despite her insistence that she’s a conservative, her total silence on illegal immigration issue identifies her as a RINO (or as we call it here in Arizona, a McCainiac). Brewer is so bad that I was amazed to be approached at the library with someone collecting signatures for her candidacy petition.
Now that Republican Dean Martin has declared himself a candidate for Brewer’s job, I expect her to quietly fade into the woodwork rather than enter the primary and get her rear kicked.
Martin is popular and the only one who has a chance of defeating Janet Napolitano's heir apparent and current Attorney General Terry Goddard.
The best news is that Martin is our strong ally in the fight against illegal immigration. Recently, he sent Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano a bill for $1 billion for the expense of housing illegal immigrants.
Certainly Brewer has no chance because she repeatedly made the same mistake as McCain. Brewer, like McCain, thinks that by catering to the left, she'll grab centrist votes from Independents.
That strategy, which might have worked for an established figure like McCain, will fail for Brewer.
In the unlikely event that Brewer prevails in the primary then, if nothing else, concerned Arizona Republicans could always write in on their ballot Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a good Republican. A vote for Arpaio deprives useless RINOs like Brewer of votes.
Thank you for publishing Sanchez’s column. It should get people all over American to thumb their noses at unfunded federal mandates.
If Obama wants illegal immigration, let him pay for it.
S. J. Miller is a veteran of the IT industry and a lifelong resident of border states of California, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Miller volunteered in Arizona's Prop. 200, a ballot measure passed by Arizona voters to exclude illegal aliens from voting and receiving publicly funded welfare benefits.
Read her VDARE.COM column about Home Depot here and her letter about former New York governor Eliot Spitzer here.

Close The Schools And Dump Criminal Aliens On Obama’s Doorstep!—My Suggestions To End Arizona’s Budget Crisis

A timely article from www.vdare.com about illegal students in Arizona, which follows this post about New Jersey. For more interesting stories like this click here to follow this blog.

Close The Schools And Dump Criminal Aliens On Obama’s Doorstep!—My Suggestions To End Arizona’s Budget Crisis
By Rob Sanchez
Arizona is getting off to a very bad start in 2010. It is flat broke. Drastic actions are necessary to save the state from total fiscal collapse. Governor Janice K. Brewer has actually dared mention the unmentionable: doing something about the costs of illegal immigration.Warnings of impending disaster came on the first day of 2010. Tucson News Channel 13 had the dire news (there is a video report also):
“A massive education payment is expected to drain state resources down to zero. What happens next will affect anyone who works for or with state government. It’s what happens when you run out of money. You can’t pay your bills."[Arizona could be weeks away from going broke, Jan 01, 2010, by Barbara Grijalva]Blogger and radio host Dave Levine wasn’t impressed with the Ch13 news article because it evaded the illegal immigration issue. Levine fired back with this:
“This is a whitewash! I don’t mean the title of the story or the fact that a bankrupt Arizona is imminent. I mean, the writer—who may very well be related to pro-illegal alien activist Congressman Raul Grijalva—doesn’t even mention the words ‘illegal aliens’ when talking about Arizona’s impending bankruptcy. As many law and order conservatives know, only a portion of the 30 to 40 million illegal aliens [VDARE.com note: We think Levine's guess at the number is too high, but most such guesses are too low.] in the U.S. pay state and Federal taxes. Why? Because many of them work under the table.”[Arizona Could Be Just Weeks Away From Going Broke (our thanks to americanpatrol.com for posting this). Posted by The Dave Levine Show on January 2, 2010]As an Arizonan, I was naturally intrigued. So on the first business day of the new year, Monday, January 4th, I called the Arizona State Treasurer’s office to find out when exactly my state government would run out of money. What I discovered was deeply disturbing—the Arizona treasury was already completely drained of funds as of January 1, 2010. The entire state fund had been used to fund the state’s education system for one month. At the time I talked to them, no money was left to pay for anything else! Imaginatively, on January 6, 2010 State Treasurer Dean Martin sent Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano a bill for $1 billion to compensate Arizona for the costs of incarcerating criminal illegal aliens (press release and invoice). Ironically, as you can see from the invoice, Treasurer Martin is doing nothing more than sending the same request that Napolitano, when Governor of Arizona, had made to the US Attorney General in 2008. After Dean Martin sent the invoice to Napolitano, the MainStream Media ridiculed the request as a publicity stunt to jump start his campaign for governor:
"Martin denied that Wednesday's press conference was a bid to gain publicity for his 2010 campaign, whether for governor or another term as treasurer.” [Martin wants feds to pay for jailed illegals, by Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services January 6, 2010] They remain in denial about the urgency of Arizona’s fiscal crisis. (Napolitano and Dean Martin have been butting heads over the state budget for quite awhile. A year ago, before she left to be the DHS secretary, an argument broke out between them at a meeting of the State Loan Commission. Napolitano angrily stomped out of the meeting without addressing Martin’s questions. It was a childish moment for Napolitano—and very ominous for the fiscal future of Arizona. Read the story here and watch the TV12 video here.)Napolitano hasn’t yet responded to Martin’s request. But even if the federal government agrees to pay the full bill, Arizona will still not be able to balance its budget.Some experts, for example University of Arizona economist Marshall Vest, think it’s now too late for spending cuts and that taxes will have to be raised. He says:
“The budget gap cannot be closed through spending cuts alone. K-12 education spending totals roughly $4 billion, Medicaid and health $2 billion, community colleges and universities $1.3 billion, prisons $1 billion, $700 million for welfare, and $1 billion for everything else. Health-related spending is mandated either by the federal government or voters, K-12 is formula-driven and voter-mandated, and federal stimulus dollars for K-12 and higher education are subject to ‘maintenance of effort’ clauses that limit further cuts without forfeiting federal dollars.
UA Economist Marshall Vest: State Budget Crisis "Looks To Be Unsolvable", by Jim Nintzel, The Tucson Weekly, Dec. 14, 2009.Of course, Vest could be expected to claim schools can’t be shut down, since he is employed by a school. Vest completely failed to mention that in 2003 FAIR estimated that Arizona spent almost $1 billion dollars to educate illegal aliens, and the citizen children of illegals. In 2004, Virginia Abernethy estimated the tab to be at least $1.25 billion. (The East Valley Tribune story reporting this estimate wasn't titled "Illegals Rip Off Arizona Schools For $$$", but Migrant foe tied to racism.)In total, the federal government owes Arizona over $2 billion just to compensate the state for the illegal alien impact on prisons and schools. That is a lot of money—but it doesn’t include the various other unfunded mandates that burdens Arizona, such as emergency health care for illegal aliens, or for the infrastructure costs they require. To put this in perspective: illegal immigration could amount to at least half of Arizona’s budget deficit! ($1 billion for prisons, $1 billion for schools—the deficit is estimated at $4.5 billion. Yes, these are big round numbers—it's that kind of problem.)This warning from Governor Janice K. Brewer’s January 11 State of the State address makes the problem unusually clear:
“The biggest external threat to our budget comes from the federal government -- oppressive health care mandates, job-killing environmental restrictions, and continual refusal to pay for costs associated with illegal immigration.” [My emphasis]The Governor said she would publish her own budget plan on Friday. It will no doubt rely on the professional politicians’ preferred solution to everything: raise taxes. But she added “the suggestion box is wide open”.It is? Well, here are my suggestions.As an Arizonan, I believe there are solutions to Arizona’s budget woes that don’t require tax increases or severe benefit cuts to our poor and needy. If the people of Arizona apply common sense to solve the crisis, and they are willing to make some tough choices, the budget crisis can at least be forestalled.
The first thing that must be done: release all of the criminal aliens imprisoned in Arizona. They will be put in buses and given a free ride to Washington DC. The buses could drop them off right in front of the White House. Arizona will gladly let the federal government decide what to do with these illegal aliens, who have been jailed for crimes such as murder, rape, theft, drug dealing, human smuggling, etc. But Arizona can no longer shoulder the burden of jailing these criminals until the federal government gives full compensation. The billion dollars saved from vacating prisons will allow the state to run for several months.
The second step: stop all funding for Arizona’s education system. Doors must be closed shut at universities like ASU and UA, community colleges, and all K-12 schools—except for private schools that don’t receive state money. Students will take an extended vacation during the beautiful winter season (hurray!) until the budget issue is resolved. When school re-opens the students can make up the time in a summer session. In the meantime Arizona students will get a valuable lesson on budgets and economics.
The third step: After the schools close, administrators, politicians, and PTAs will have plenty of time to audit the education system to figure out how many illegal alien students are enrolled. Once that number is determined, and a list is made of who they are, all of the illegal alien students will be cut from the school rolls. Nothing new will be required in terms of documentation to determine which students are in the schools illegally. Schools are already supposed to require proof of residency and a valid birth certificate in order to enroll. They know who the illegal aliens are—the ones who are literally “undocumented”!Reduced enrollments will allow for the closing of unnecessary schools and the consolidation of redundant resources. Additional funds could be raised as newly-vacated school yards are sold for other purposes, such as shopping malls or for industrial uses—or maybe to build more homes and parks!Sadly, many teachers and administrators will lose their jobs as facilities close. It is imperative that the first employees to be pink-slipped will be those on temporary work visas like H-1B. No American should lose their job until every single non-citizen worker has been fired first.If, after all of those steps, the budget cuts still don’t balance the budget, then we should look at the problem of “anchor babies” (children whose parents are illegal—but who are regarded as citizens under the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment). If legislation or litigation cannot resolve this problem quickly enough, maybe the illegal alien parents should be persuaded go home, and take their children with them.Without a doubt, eliminating illegal aliens from our schools will invite legal challenges—probably all the way to the Supreme Court. But the cost of the lawyers to defend Arizona’s actions would be far less than the cost of educating students who don’t belong in the United States anyway.Once the schools clean out the illegal aliens, they can be re-opened. Or, of course, Arizona could just send a billion dollar bill to the US Secretary of Education. But this can’t happen until Arizona educational bureaucrats are willing to be honest about the number of illegal aliens in our schools. So far, they have resisted transparency. For example, my local Kyrene School District claims that transparency on budget issues is one of its policy goals. But when it comes to the cost of illegal immigration it obfuscates the issue. I found out just how stubborn and evasive the bureaucrats can be when, with another concerned citizen, I confronted the school board on two different occasions to find out how many illegal aliens attend Kyrene schools. The board stonewalled me us on this basic question of fact. (Watch these two YouTube videos of the confrontations that occurred on May 12th and July 14th. Transcripts of the meeting can be read here and here.)The superintendent of the governing board didn’t answer my questions but instead passed the buck by requesting that I send a letter to their lawyer, Janis Merill. She responded with vague answers and innuendo. She used Plyler vs. Doe to justify the secrecy but never explained specifically how, and made vague references to other Arizona laws. Plyler vs. Doe is the notorious Supreme Court ruling that is widely interpreted as requiring school districts to educate illegal aliens—but it doesn’t prevent schools from counting the number of illegals. My reading of the decision: it doesn’t necessarily forbid states from denying educations to illegal aliens as long as the state can come up with a better reason than Texas used to cut illegal students. Preventing bankruptcy is a pretty compelling argument. The case must be re-argued as soon as possible.The Kyrene School Board and their lawyer illustrate why Arizona needs SB1172—a bill sponsored by state representative Russell Pearce requiring schools to tabulate the number of illegal alien students.Last year Pearce’s bill passed the Senate Education Committee but stalled in the Senate Rules Committee. The bill never made it to the House, perhaps due to pressure from the ACLU who threatened to sue Arizona if the bill passed:
“The 4-2 vote by the Senate Committee on Education Accountability and Reform came even after an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said it would violate federal law. Alessandra Meetze said if lawmakers SB 1172 into law, her group will sue.
“‘Let them sue,’ responded Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who crafted the legislation.” [Senate bill would ask student immigration status, By Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services, June 24, 2009, June 24, 2009]Russell Pearce plans to re-introduce the bill this year. But it won’t be in time to save the state from economic catastrophe. The plan I suggest might sound draconian. But there will be far more suffering and angst if something isn’t done very quickly to balance the state budget. The way things are going, the schools will have to close anyway—it will be just a matter of time. Proposals to sell state-owned buildings and to resort to accounting flim-flam are at best a short-term solution to stay afloat. Even if President Obama, or the tooth fairy, bail out Arizona’s schools, the problem won’t go away. Free education encourages more illegal aliens to attend our schools. The resulting increases in the number of students perpetuate the problem and are ultimately unsustainable—it’s a just particular case of America’s overall post-1965 immigration disaster.We Arizonans need to close the schools—and dump our criminal aliens on Obama’s doorstep—NOW!
Rob Sanchez (email him)