Before I had resolved which scandal was distracting from which, we found out the Department of Justice was spying on The Associated Press — not to protect national security, but to prevent the AP from scooping the White House. Then, this week, it broke that the Department of Justice was also spying on Fox News for reasons that remain unexplained.

Meanwhile, Sens. Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and John McCain are working feverishly to turn the country into Mexico.

So now I think all the scandals are intended to distract from Rubio’s amnesty bill.

For decades, Mexicans have been about 30 percent of all legal immigrants to the United States, while only a smidgen more than 1 percent come from Great Britain. Is that fair? Granted, their food is better, but why is it the norm is to have nearly 30 times as many Mexican as British immigrants?

We have been taking in more immigrants from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, individually, than from England, our mother country. There are nearly twice as many immigrants from El Salvador as from Canada, and 10 times as many as from Australia.

Why can’t the country be more or less the ethnic composition that it always was? The 50-1 Latin American-to-European ratio isn’t a natural phenomenon that might result from, say, Europeans losing interest in coming here and poor Latin Americans providing some unique skill desperately needed in our modern, technology-based economy.

To the contrary, it’s result of an insane government policy. Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was designed to artificially inflate the number of immigrants from the Third World, while making it virtually impossible for anyone from the nations that historically provided our immigrants to come here.

Pre-1965 immigrants were what made this country what it was for a reason: They were the pre-welfare state immigrants. From around 1630 to 1966, immigrants sank or swam. About a third of them couldn’t make it in America and went home — and those are the ones who weren’t rejected right off the boat for being sick, crippled or idiots.

That’s why corny stories of someone’s ancestors coming here a half-century ago are completely irrelevant. If their ancestors hadn’t succeeded, their great-grandchildren wouldn’t be here to tell the story because no one was given food stamps, free medical care and housing to stay. (And vote Democrat.)

Now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by holding ourselves out as the welfare ward of the world and specifically rejecting skilled immigrants.

As Milton Friedman said, you cannot have open borders and a welfare state. The reason a country’s average immigrant matters is that the losers never go home — they go on welfare. (Maybe if they had to work, immigrants wouldn’t have as much time to build bombs.) Airy statements about wanting to end welfare aren’t going to change that implacable fact…

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The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties — something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.

Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers.

For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give him or her a copy of the book “Guns and Violence” by Joyce Lee Malcolm.

As the facts in that book demolish the gun control propaganda fed to students by their professors, that can create a healthy skepticism about other professorial propaganda.

There are other books that can likewise demolish other politically correct beliefs that prevail on campuses. My own recent book, “Intellectuals and Race,” has innumerable documented facts that expose the fallacies in most of what is said about racial issues in most college classrooms.

For those students who have bought the campus party line on Third World nations, the classic study of that subject is “Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion” by the late P.T. Bauer of the London School of Economics. He made a veritable demolition derby of most of what has been said in politically correct circles about the relationship between rich and poor countries.

Although Britain is the setting for “Life at the Bottom,” Americans will recognize very similar patterns here. Problems found in low-income black ghettoes in the United States are found in low-income white neighborhoods in Britain, where none of the usual excuses about racism, slavery, etc., apply. The only thing that is the same in both countries is the welfare state and its poisonous ideology…

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But Apple pays its U.S. taxes. Heritage tax expert Curtis Dubay said the earnings aren’t “shifted,” because “it’s not income that’s earned here in the U.S.”

“I can’t go down to the Apple store here in Washington, buy an iPad, and have Apple then ‘shift’ that income abroad,” Dubay said.

The Senators were up in arms about Apple keeping income in Ireland. The issue was the company’s foreign income earned from all those iPhones and iPods that people around the world are buying.

The reason the Senate feigned indignation over an issue that had nothing to do with the U.S. is that some Members want Apple to pay more U.S. tax on all that foreign cash. They want Apple to bring all of that profit back into the U.S. and pay the U.S. corporate tax rate—the world’s highest—on it. But as long as we keep the U.S. rate the highest in the world, Apple and other multinational businesses are going to keep their foreign income abroad.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said it was offensive that Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) called in the leaders of a company that is trying to do right by its shareholders. He said:

Instead of Apple executives, we should have brought in here today a giant mirror, okay? So we could look at the reflection of Congress, because this problem is solely and completely created by the awful tax code. If you want to assign blame, the committee needs to look in this mirror and see who created the mess.

Apple—and any other company that does business outside the U.S.—isn’t doing anything illegal to minimize its tax liability. In fact, America’s high corporate tax rate drives companies to do more business overseas.

Not only that, but “we’re the only country that effectively taxes our businesses on income they earn around the world,” Heritage’s Dubay said. “They’re keeping that income abroad because we add that extra layer of tax.”

Apple—and any other company that does business outside the U.S.—isn’t doing anything illegal to minimize its tax liability. In fact, America’s high corporate tax rate drives companies to do more business overseas…

Continued from the Morning Bell

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Obama revealed to us in recent days is something rare in our history: a spectator president, clueless about what is going on in his own household, who reacts to revelations like some stunned bystander.

Consider. Because of a grave national security leak, Obama’s Department of Justice seized two months of records from 20 telephones used by The Associated Press. An unprecedented seizure.

Yet the president was left completely in the dark. And though he rushed to defend the seizure, he claims he was uninvolved.

While the AP issue does not appear to have legs — we know what was done and why — it has badly damaged this president. For his own Justice Department treated the press, which has an exalted opinion of itself and its role, with the same contempt as the IRS treated the Tea Party.

The episode has damaged a crucial presidential asset. For this Washington press corps had provided this president with a protective coverage of his follies and failings unseen since the White House press of half a century ago covered up the prowlings of JFK.

The Benghazi issue is of far greater gravity. Still, Obama’s sins here as well seem to be those of omission, not commission.

Obama was apparently completely in the dark about the urgent requests from Benghazi for more security. Obama was also apparently completely out of the loop during the seven-hour crisis of Sept. 11-12, when Ambassador Stevens was assassinated, calls for help from Benghazi were denied and two heroic ex-Navy SEALs died fighting to defend U.S. personnel from the roof of that CIA installation.

No one seems to know where Obama was that night.

The following week, as the State Department, CIA and National Security Council all worked the “talking points” to make it appear that this preplanned terrorist atrocity was a spontaneous event triggered by an anti-Islamic video, Obama knew nothing of the discussions.

Thus, almost a week after the massacre, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was put on six networks to move the line that we could not have better prepared for what would happen in Benghazi because it was all a spontaneous event triggered by a YouTube video.

Rice’s version was untrue, but consistent with Obama’s campaign message: “Bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is on the run.”

Yet if Rice’s credibility was crippled by what she was sent out to parrot, a week after she got the egg all over her face, Obama was himself peddling the same line at the United Nations. Obama, it seems, may have been the last man to know the cover story had collapsed…

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The food stamps sweeten the farm deal for lawmakers, who admit that the combination works for their political purposes. As Heritage experts Daren Bakst and Diane Katz explain:

The food stamp portion creates a reason for urban representatives to support farm subsidies, and for farm-state lawmakers to support food stamps.

Talk of de-politicizing agriculture programs and welfare policy is met with stiff resistance. For example, Senator Thad Cochran (R–MS), ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, recently told the North American Agricultural Journalists group that food stamps should continue to be included in the farm bill “purely from a political perspective. It helps get the farm bill passed.”

Food stamps are there to help “get the farm bill passed.” And the relation of the rest of the farm bill to farming is also questionable. Bakst and Katz note that “Congress has expanded the farm bill over time into a costly compilation of disparate programs. Along with agriculture and food stamps, the legislation includes dozens of forestry, conservation, energy, and rural development programs.”

It has become the norm that Congress lumps billions—even trillions—of dollars in taxpayer-funded programs together into huge bills. This allows them to sneak in plenty of special-interest pork.

Each of these programs deserves to be evaluated on its own, and taxpayers deserve transparency from Congress about how it plans to spend our money.

For example, food stamps are a massive program that needs a careful look. Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration, and participation is at historic highs. Recruiters hold bingo games and other “parties” to try to get more people on the food stamp rolls.

Farm commodity programs are also a major concern and in dire need of reform. Congress may eliminate the egregious direct payment program, which pays farmers for doing nothing. However, instead of stopping there, both the House and Senate farm bills would replace direct payments with programs that could wind up being even costlier.

Food stamps and farming ultimately have to do with food, but that’s about all they have in common. Making the farm bill 80 percent food stamps just doesn’t make sense…

Continued from the Morning Bell

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Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters.

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

Whitehouse went on to condemn the current Republican position on global warming, citing economic, environmental and diplomatic damages…

“You drag America with you to your fate,” he continued. “So, I want this future: I want a Republican Party that has returned to its senses and is strong and a worthy adversary in a strong America that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want. I don’t want this future. I don’t want a Republican Party disgraced, that let its extremists run off the cliff, and an America suffering from grave economic and environmental and diplomatic damage because we failed, because we didn’t wake up and do our duty to our people, and because we didn’t lead the world. I do not want that future. But that’s where we’re headed. So I will keep reaching out and calling out, ever hopeful that you will wake up before it is too late.”

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We, of course, believe the latter.  Wayne Lusvardi, in a recent CalWatchdog article made the point that “the Delta is still a vibrant eco-system for predator striped bass and ugly bottom feeder catfish. But it is not considered a politically correct ecosystem for pretty and tiny fish that can be sold to the public as “endangered” — salmon, smelt, etc.”

Steven Greenhut, writing about the Governor’s plan to build giant tunnels under the Delta, asks in a Human Events column “what are the chances that once the smelt issue is fixed that environmentalists won’t find another reason to sue to stop the water flows given that the water flows are the source of the real dispute?”  We all know the answer to that one.  Environmentalists are constantly attempting to add to the endangered species list just in case we succeed in taking something off the list.  The Delta Smelt is merely the current justification for denying farmers their water.  Here are some other provocative quotes for you to ponder:

August Promnitz:  “But the ugly truth of the matter is that this species of fish has developed and evolved no traits by which it can survive. So, nature (if man is included in it) has selected the smelt for extinction. It may sound cruel to allow the smelt to die off, but this is simply natural selection in action.”

William Busse:  “The value of the Delta smelt? Essentially nothing. Besides serving as bait for attracting larger fish, the Delta smelt is not edible, does not eliminate pests or have any meaningful commercial value. Sometimes, despite environmentalist’s protestations to the contrary, certain species reach a natural evolutionary dead end.”

We know Wayne Lusvardi’s comments about the striped bass and catfish are true, and certain fish thrive in the Delta and others don’t.  We also know that scientists are uncertain about what is causing the Delta’s problems, as they define them.  Scientists call problems in the Delta ‘stressors’, and have attempted for decades to determine a priority list, but can’t come to any agreement.  While the debate rages, farmer’s water is cut off.  We know we are biased in this argument, but somehow it seems prudent to favor farmers over smelt until the argument is resolved.  Environmentalists say if we don’t do something now, it will be too late for the smelt.  As farmers, we also say if we don’t do something now it will be too late for us.  Choose farmers over baitfish, please.

Delta’s Biggest Enemy Hard To Pinpoint

There are more than 40 potential causes for the Delta’s decline, scientists said Friday, but ranking them in order is just too difficult. “We’re not in a position now – we may be in a position later – to say it’s these three stressors that are causing 90 percent of the problem, or one stressor causing 45 percent of the problem,” said Richard Norgaard, chair of the Delta Independent Science Board, a panel of 10 experts established by California’s sweeping water reform in 2009. “At the present state of knowledge, we just think there’s a lot of interacting stressors,” Norgaard told the Delta Stewardship Council on Friday. The result of the board’s work so far is not likely to satisfy anyone hungering for immediate answers.

Then-state Assemblywoman Jean Fuller of Bakersfield, now a Republican in the state Senate, requested an “assessment” of the contributing factors in August along with 22 other elected officials. In particular, Fuller has said she’s concerned that predatory alien fish such as striped bass are chowing down on native species, causing their numbers to decline to the point where officials restricted how much Delta water could be sent south to her district.

Many environmentalists, on the other hand, have argued that the millions of acre-feet of water pumped from the Delta each year are the fundamental problem. But the list of the Delta’s many cuts released last week is broad. Certain “drivers,” such as climate change, may exacerbate “stressors” such as sea level rise or diminished water supply, and there’s not much local officials can do within the Delta itself to stop that.

Other problems date back decades or longer – the elimination of wetland habitat, the persistence of mercury from the Gold Rush days, upstream dams and invasive species. Some are happening right now, such as water diversions from upstream tributaries, from within the estuary itself and from the giant pumps near Tracy that supply much of the state and kill fish in the process. And finally, there are problems still to come, such as continued subsidence or sinking of Delta islands, and the expansion of cities such as Stockton that contribute pollution to the estuary. Ultimately, the scientists said they could not conclude that any one factor, or any small combination of the 40-plus factors, is the root of the Delta’s problems. While the scientists aren’t promising to ultimately rank all of these factors, they said they’ll work with the council to say which combination of problems might help meet certain goals.

Members of the Delta Stewardship Council must write a plan by year’s end that balances the “co-equal goals” of restoring the estuary’s ecosystem while ensuring a reliable water supply for the 25 million Californians who rely on the Delta to some degree. The scientists’ evaluation can help shape that plan.

Council member Randy Fiorini, a rancher from Turlock, said it was a “very, very useful report. “It outlines how complex the issues that we’re dealing with are,” he said.

A long list

Scientists say many causes may be contributing to the decline of the Delta:

• Global causes: Climate change (sea level rise, changes in water flows, higher temperatures and changes in ocean conditions); earthquakes; population growth; state economy.
• Historic causes: Habitat loss; mercury from the Gold Rush accumulating in fish; toxic selenium runoff from farms; sinking Delta islands; artificial levees that may break, causing flooding; upstream dams that cut off breeding areas for salmon; agricultural subsidies; development, zoning and building codes; invasive species.
• Current causes: Water withdrawals upstream of the Delta, in the Delta and outside of the Delta; fish sucked into export pumps; nutrients from farm runoff and city wastewater treatment plants; pesticides; metals that enter the water from farms, cities and industry; channel dredging; illegal harvest of threatened species; hatcheries that alter the genetic makeup of fish.
• Anticipated causes: Landscape changes; urban expansion; land use along streams feeding the Delta; people’s lifestyle decisions on where and how they live.

Contributed by FPV

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